Same font except its weight seems different on different browsers

Question

The text is correctly displayed in Chrome. I want it to display this way in all browsers. How can I do this?

I was able to fix this in Safari with -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;

Chrome:

Firefox:

h1 {
    font-family: Georgia;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-size: 16pt;
    color: #444444;
    -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
}

<h1>Hi, my name</h1>

And a JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/jnxQ8/1/

Solution 1

Be sure the font is the same for all browsers. If it is the same font, then the problem has no solution using cross-browser CSS.

Because every browser has its own font rendering engine, they are all different. They can also differ in later versions, or across different OS's.

UPDATE: For those who do not understand the browser and OS font rendering differences, read this and this.

However, the difference is not even noticeable by most people, and users accept that. Forget pixel-perfect cross-browser design, unless you are:

1. Trying to turn-off the subpixel rendering by CSS (not all browsers allow that and the text may be ugly...)
2. Using images (resources are demanding and hard to maintain)
3. Replacing Flash (need some programming and doesn't work on iOS)

---

UPDATE: I checked the example page. Tuning the kerning by text-rendering should help:

text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; 

More references here:

1. Part of the font-rendering is controlled by font-smoothing (as mentioned) and another part is text-rendering. Tuning these properties may help as their default values are not the same across browsers.
2. For Chrome, if this is still not displaying OK for you, try this text-shadow hack. It should improve your Chrome font rendering, especially in Windows. However, text-shadow will go mad under Windows XP. Be careful.

Solution 2

In order to best standardise your @font-face embedded fonts across browsers try including the below inside your @font-face declaration or on your body font styling:

speak: none;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
font-variant: normal;
text-transform: none;
line-height: 1;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;

At present there looks to be no universal fix across all platforms and browser builds. As stated frequently all browsers/OS have different text rendering engines.

Solution 3

There's some great information about this here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857142

Still experimenting but so far a minimally invasive solution, aimed only at FF is:

body {
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
}

Solution 4

Try -webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased;

Solution 5

I collected and tested discussed solutions:

Windows10 Prof x64:

* FireFox v.56.0 x32 
* Opera v.49.0
* Google Chrome v.61.0.3163.100 x64-bit

macOs X Serra v.10.12.6 Mac mini (Mid 2010):

* Safari v.10.1.2(12603.3.8)
* FireFox v.57.0 Quantum
* Opera v49.0

Semi (still micro fat in Safari) solved fatty fonts:

text-transform: none; // mac ff fix
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; // safari mac nicer
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale; // fix fatty ff on mac

Have no visual effect

line-height: 1;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; 
speak: none;
font-style: normal;
font-variant: normal;

Wrong visual effect:

-webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased !important; //more fatty in safari
text-rendering: geometricPrecision !important; //more fatty in safari

do not forget to set !important when testing or be sure that your style is not overridden

View more solutions

Comments

[ChrisW]

I don't understand why Chrome and Safari render differently: they're both WebKit-based.

[seymar]

Yeah, but Chrome apparantly does automatically apply `-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;' and Safari doesn't?

[seymar]

But It has nothing to do with the boldness of the font?

[vincicat]

chrome and safari is similar but not the same browser: they shared same base, webkit, but many platform-specific components and css modules are different - safari support more css3 property than chrome. And font-rendering is quite platform-specific.

[vincicat]

boldness is controlled by font-smoothing (and the subpixel technique by OS and browser rendering engine) most.

[Domokun]

@ChrisW - Safari has it's own font rendering engine to give a similar experience as on OSX. Thus the '-webkit-font-smoothing' property will only appear to work on Safari (under Windows). And yet another variable is, you can modify the anti-aliasing in the browser Preferences.

[user956584]

ON chrome is the same its start on Chrome 20 , chrome 17 whose OK

[Kris Selbekk]

I actually had a problem on two different pages of the same site, with the same CSS applied, rendering different results. The font-smoothing: antialiased; worked wonders for me.

[Devangi Desai]

I am still facing problem with Safari - too bold and chrome normal bold. Please give me proper solution. I am using Mac

[jontro]

How would text-transform fix/break anything?