salvaged post about macos font smoothing changes

_posts/2019-01-23-text-in-fonts-too-bold-or-blurry-in-firefox-on-macos-mojave.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title:  "Text in fonts too bold or blurry in Firefox on macOS Mojave?"
+date:   2019-01-23 22:23:08 UTC
+categories: social comments
+tags: firefox macos
+external-url: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/aj3p2v/fonts_too_bold_since_firefox_devedition_660b1/eessjmm/
+image: 
+
+---
+
+# Original Post
+
+>Hello Dear Firefox Community!
+>
+>Since the last update of Firefox Developer Edition to v66.0b1 (64Bit) on macOS Mojave I've got a weird problem: It looks like the browser shifts the font-weight definition up on every website for one step. So what used to be 200 is now 300, 300 is 400 and so on. When I roll back to the previous version everything works fine again. Looks like the font rendering is broken since the update.
+>
+>Is it just me or was there a change and maybe a bug with the font rendering?
+>
+>Currently I only had the possibility to test it on macOS Mojave (10.14.2) so unfortunately I can't say if other operating systems are also affected by this. My other regular Firefox installation (stable, v64.0.2) on the same devices also still work as expected, so I don't think it's an OS related issue, especially because I can fix it by rolling back one FF Dev version.
+>
+>I already tried to purge caches to make sure there are no corrupt data there, tried a new user profile and fiddled with the hardware acceleration settings, but no changes there.
+>
+>Thanks in advance for your help or feedback to that problem!
+
+## My Comments
+
+It looks like this is the issue - but it looks like it is a [*fix*](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1495282 "Some fonts are lighter weight after updating from macOS 10.13 to 10.14 Mojave").
+
+Have you played with any of the font smoothing settings in Mojave? I know there were changes around that. Also, it may be significant if you are on an external high DPI display vs. one built in to a Mac.
+
+This fixes a bug in Firefox. Compare the text to Safari - Firefox is respecting your platform setting instead of doing its own thing. 
+
+Most Mac users want that. 
+
+FYI, if you are on a non-retina display, you will need to wait until Firefox 66 for a further fix (I guess developers are mostly on laptops with high DPI).
+
+### Context
+
+In the macOS Mojave 10.14 release, Apple [removed support for subpixel anti-aliasing](https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/07/13/macos-10-14-mojave-removes-subpixel-anti-aliasing/) but kept "dilation" (bolding) for standard pixel density displays. Concurrently, the Firefox 2D rendering code ([Skia](https://skia.org/)) included a bug that [disabled gamma conversion](https://skia.googlesource.com/skia/+/16d00eeef7d18dcfd28725bcb4c15dad633ab7eb%5E%21/#F0), making fonts look thinner.
+
+Mozilla shipped a fix for this in Firefox 66 to match the platform vendor (Apple).
+
+This was a platform change, so users differed on which behavior they ended up preferring; while many users seemed to gravitate towards disabling font smoothing, on my low-DPI MacBook Air running Catalina, I still have font smoothing enabled. Clearly, Apple wants its customers on high-DPI displays, however -- with [fewer hacks](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17477526) for making text look better on lower DPI displays. 
+
+---
+
+{% include donate-social.html %} You can also message me on [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/@yoasif).

_posts/2024-12-09-leaving-reddit-and-salvaging-my-posts.markdown

@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ Stay tuned for more, and feel free to drop your thoughts or comments on Mastodon
 
 ### 2019
 
+* [Text in fonts too bold or blurry in Firefox on macOS Mojave?]({% post_url 2019-01-23-text-in-fonts-too-bold-or-blurry-in-firefox-on-macos-mojave %})
 * [Dashlane doesn't work with Firefox]({% post_url 2019-01-29-dashlane-doesnt-work-with-firefox %})
 * [Is there any difference between Facebook Container and Firefox Multi-Account Containers?]({% post_url 2019-02-04-is-there-any-difference-between-facebook-container-and-firefox-multi-account-containers %})
 * [How can I set a manually installed browser as the default on Debian-based distributions?]({% post_url 2019-02-05-how-can-i-set-a-manually-installed-browser-as-the-default-on-debian-ubuntu-mint %})