The Microsoft Windows operating environment introduced something called "font smoothing" right around the time Internet Explorer 4.0 was released in 1997. Even way back then (this is before the release of Windows 98) Microsoft understood that type on screen must be as legible as possible.

ClearType, another Microsoft way of making fonts look better, was announced in 1998 but didn’t make an appearance until January 2000 as a feature of the Microsoft Reader software for those that remember that title.

When Windows XP was introduced in 2001, ClearType was built-in.

All this font stuff is called subpixel rendering technology. In layman’s terms is just means the fonts you see on screen are rendered differently.

In Windows XP (and in Vista assumedly) you can enable or disable ClearType at whim. This is done via Control Panel / Display / Appearance / Effects button. You see this:

If you check "Use the following method…" and select "Standard" from the drop-down menu, fonts under the 12pt size will not show as ClearType. If you select "ClearType", all fonts are rendered in ClearType. If you uncheck the box, no fonts will be shown in ClearType at all.

I do recommend anyone running Windows XP to download and use the ClearType Tuner PowerToy. This will add an icon in your Control Panel called "ClearType Tuning". When you click it you see this:

Using the Wizard helps out a great deal in selecting how much ClearType rendering you want. Very handy to have.

Which is more readable, ClearType or Standard?

This obviously depends on a few factors:

LCD or CRT?

Subpixel rendering has heavy concentration to make fonts look good on an LCD monitor (note the screen shot above: "..improves the readability of text on existing LCDs"). More often than not if you’re using a CRT, turning ClearType off will look better.

Why is this? Because CRT monitors aren’t as crisp as LCDs are. If you have ClearType enabled on a CRT it may "fuzz out" the fonts too much causing them to look "smudgy".

Font size

Obviously larger fonts look better than smaller ones when talking about subpixel rendering. Think of it this way: With digital photography, larger resolution is always better. With smaller resolutions you lose focus. The same can be said for fonts.

LCD screen striping

If the smaller fonts on your screen have the tendency to have oddly-colored edges, sometimes something as simple as changing the LCD screen striping will fix this. The ClearType Tuning applet has an "Advanced" section where you can change it from red/green/blue to blue/green/red:

Note the left side of the screen shot above.

If when you change this it makes the fonts look bad, just change it back. It will not "mess up" your monitor whatsoever because it has nothing to do with screen resolution; just the font rendering method.

Standard resolution fonts do not have any issue whatsoever with display no matter what screen striping method you use.

Is the font "interrupted" by a background image?

This is particularly dealing with what wallpaper you use. Certain wallpaper will make the text under your icons difficult to read while others will not.

General rule of thumb: Darker-image wallpaper always make the icon text look better. And of course, using no wallpaper is the best for legibility - especially if the background color is black.

What’s your refresh rate?

The standard refresh rate for almost all LCD monitors is 60Hz. I made mention in the past that some offer the option of 59Hz. This may offer slightly better readability.

With CRT monitors, the default refresh rate is also 60Hz - but you may find better luck with 70, 72, 75 or 85 depending on the choices you have.

If no matter what you do for hertz on a CRT the fonts still look crappy, disable ClearType.

Screen hardware settings

This actually has nothing to do with the font itself but rather the physical monitor settings.

The ones to pay attention to are:

• Brightness
• Contrast
• Sharpness
• Color

Brightness and Contrast:

When your monitor is showing nothing but black, it should be as black as possible and not gray-ish. If the gray exists this will "fuzz" fonts a bit.

Sharpness:

Too much sharpness will cause odd colors to appear in font rendering.

Color:

You have "cool" and "warm" settings here. Generally speaking "cool" (blue-ish) is better read easier. HOWEVER - going to blue can be trying on the eyes by making the whites too stark. Adjust only in slight increments if you have the option.

Periodically I get asked how to get videos uploaded to YouTube to look better. The easiest possible way to do this is to simply capture/import and export your video file as 640×480 resolution for great video quality.

Here’s a quick tutorial for those who use Windows Movie Maker:

Import at 640×480

If you are importing from a camcorder, you can skip this step as you are already importing at 640×480 or more.

If you are capturing from a webcam, check your capture settings. It’s most likely set to 320×240. See if you have the option to bump that up to 640×480. (Note: Some webcams don’t have this option but yours might.)

If you are using screen capture software such as CamStudio, make sure you are capturing an area that is at least 640×480 in size.

Export at 640×480

When exporting your movie to WMV format, you will first see this screen:

(click for full size)

Click the link for Show more choices…

(click for full size)

Select Other settings and choose Video for LAN (768 Kbps). This will render a 640×480 video at 30 frames per second. The resulting WMV file will look better when uploaded to YouTube.

A router is any device that acts as a gateway between 2 or more separate networks. In our case, that means that the local network is connected to the Internet, and vice versa. The router ignores traffic local traffic or traffic it is not configured to handle, but when Internet access is attempted from within the local network, it springs into action. With NAT (Network Address Translation), the router shares the Internet connection to all the computers connected to the local network. The router keeps track of the originating local computer and manages the connection with the outside Internet server. If a computer on the Internet attempts a connection with the router or to a local computer past the router, the router denies the connection unless the router was specially configured to allow that connection.

Many routers can treat the wireless LAN (WLAN) as a separate network from the wired LAN. This is often done because wireless networks are easy to break into. The idea is that people can keep their wired computers away from the untrusted wireless network. The router will still share the Internet connection (WAN) to both the wireless and wired LANs, regardless of this configuration.

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