MitchellVii, I for one am with you here.
I know exactly what you are dealing with because I have pointed out to friends and colleagues that Firefox/Aurora can render text much nicer than Chrome on Windows because Firefox can optionally use DirectWrite which leverages subpixel letter positioning and advanced kerning to yield small text that is absolutely beautiful, even on relatively low-DPI desktop monitors. I will show them side-by-side screenshots and they just say "meh." I used to have fantastic eyesight and now it's just decent, so it's not really a matter of eyesight. It's a matter of whether or not your brain is bothered by rendering quirks.
What do I mean by rendering quirks? Three examples:
1. Imbalanced stroke weight between horizontal and vertical strokes. It's very common with "hinted" small fonts displayed without subpixel rendering to have uneven visual weight between vertical and horizontal lines (or "strokes") in the letter glyphs. The reason is that without subpixel rendering, the minimum width is one pixel, but horizontal strokes tend to appear bolder. So hinted fonts often use two pixels of weight (or with cleartype, a fractional amount of weight greater than 1, but to be clear, this is not subpixel positioning) for vertical strokes. This causes odd balance that often drives my eyes/brain nuts. It's like the letters have tiny smudges all over.
2. Without subpixel positioning, characters within words will often look improperly spaced. Compared to Firefox with DirectWrite enabled, Chrome renders too much gap between many combinations of letters. Looking at the words of your message as I type this in Chrome and Firefox side-by-side, here are a few words that emphasize Chrome's inability to position characters with any precision:
anti (too much space between n and t)
at (too much space between a and t)
me! (too much space between e and !)
In Buelligan's username at the left, Chrome applies too little spacing between the B and u. They are nearly touching.
3. Lack of advanced kerning. This is especially bothersome with all-caps words. You wrote "TONS" earlier and in Chrome, the T and O are too far apart because Chrome doesn't support DirectWrite's kerning. Firefox with DirectWrite enabled will snugly fit the rightmost edge of the T into the gap left available by the O.
To be clear about something: I think Office 2013 is my favorite version of Office in some time. I love the touch UI they added and overall, the features and speed make me very happy. But I see exactly the same decrease in font rendering quality you perceive. I wouldn't go so far to call it horrible. But it's definitely a step backward, and that boggles my mind.
Judging by the response here, however, it looks like Microsoft knew they would not hear many complaints about it.
I know exactly what you are dealing with because I have pointed out to friends and colleagues that Firefox/Aurora can render text much nicer than Chrome on Windows because Firefox can optionally use DirectWrite which leverages subpixel letter positioning and advanced kerning to yield small text that is absolutely beautiful, even on relatively low-DPI desktop monitors. I will show them side-by-side screenshots and they just say "meh." I used to have fantastic eyesight and now it's just decent, so it's not really a matter of eyesight. It's a matter of whether or not your brain is bothered by rendering quirks.
What do I mean by rendering quirks? Three examples:
1. Imbalanced stroke weight between horizontal and vertical strokes. It's very common with "hinted" small fonts displayed without subpixel rendering to have uneven visual weight between vertical and horizontal lines (or "strokes") in the letter glyphs. The reason is that without subpixel rendering, the minimum width is one pixel, but horizontal strokes tend to appear bolder. So hinted fonts often use two pixels of weight (or with cleartype, a fractional amount of weight greater than 1, but to be clear, this is not subpixel positioning) for vertical strokes. This causes odd balance that often drives my eyes/brain nuts. It's like the letters have tiny smudges all over.
2. Without subpixel positioning, characters within words will often look improperly spaced. Compared to Firefox with DirectWrite enabled, Chrome renders too much gap between many combinations of letters. Looking at the words of your message as I type this in Chrome and Firefox side-by-side, here are a few words that emphasize Chrome's inability to position characters with any precision:
anti (too much space between n and t)
at (too much space between a and t)
me! (too much space between e and !)
In Buelligan's username at the left, Chrome applies too little spacing between the B and u. They are nearly touching.
3. Lack of advanced kerning. This is especially bothersome with all-caps words. You wrote "TONS" earlier and in Chrome, the T and O are too far apart because Chrome doesn't support DirectWrite's kerning. Firefox with DirectWrite enabled will snugly fit the rightmost edge of the T into the gap left available by the O.
To be clear about something: I think Office 2013 is my favorite version of Office in some time. I love the touch UI they added and overall, the features and speed make me very happy. But I see exactly the same decrease in font rendering quality you perceive. I wouldn't go so far to call it horrible. But it's definitely a step backward, and that boggles my mind.
Judging by the response here, however, it looks like Microsoft knew they would not hear many complaints about it.
