Google webfonts render choppy in Chrome on Windows

Question

I use the Google Webfonts service on my website and rely heavily on it. It renders fine on most browsers, but in Chrome on Windows it renders especially bad. Very choppy and pixelated.

What i have found out so far is that Chrome requires the .svg format font to be loaded first. The font i am using however, called Asap, was only available in .woff. I converted it to .svg using a free online service, but when i added that to my stylesheet (before the .woff), it didn't change anything.

I've also tried:

-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px;

Hoping that either would help the text render more smoothly.

Right now i've run out of ideas and i would hate to change fonts. Does anyone have an idea how i can solve this problem? I've been using the Adobe Browserlab to test the rendering, seeing as how i only own a mac. The link to the site is: www.symvoli.nl/about

Thanks in advance!

Edit April 11th, 2013:

Chrome 35 Beta seems to have finally solved this issue:

Answer 1

It seems that Google might serve different woff files depending on the browser and OS.

I found that if I download the font from IE, it's about 10k bigger than if done on Safari from the Mac for a particular font. 43k vs 33k. Also, the IE version seems to look fine on the Mac, but the Mac version doesn't seem to work fine on the PC. The Mac version looks the worst in Mozilla Firefox on the PC.

Try this: http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic

SourceSansPro-Regular.woff PC version 27k

SourceSansPro-Regular.woff Apple version 24k

Answer 2

A fix has been suggested here by calling the .svg file first, http://www.adtrak.co.uk/blog/font-face-chrome-rendering/

Answer 3

https://www.gettingthingstech.com/how-to-fix-jagged-font-rendering-in-google-chrome/

This post explains a little about google chromes experimental functions. Apparently enabling the "DisableWrite" option fixes the jagged fonts. This is obviously a fix PER machine and not on a full scale.

Answer 4

Another link reference for web font rendering in chrome -

http://www.fontspring.com/blog/smoother-web-font-rendering-chrome

Answer 5

Answer by Tom & font-spring didn't do it for me for some reason. This fix by Sam Goddard did though :

After experimenting myself, I stumbled across what appears to be a decent, very easy fix for this issue. It appears that Chrome utilises the .svg file in the @font-face kit, and doesn’t like being called last. Below is the standard call for @font-face using CSS:

// font-face inclusion
@font-face {
  font-family: 'font-name';
                src: url('path-to-font/font-name.eot');
                src: url('path-to-font/font-name.eot?#iefix') format('eot'),
                url('path-to-font/font-name.woff') format('woff'),
                url('path-to-font/font-name.ttf') format('truetype'),
                url('path-to-font/font-name.svg') format('svg');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

As can be seen in the example, the .svg file comes last in the list of called URLs. If we amend the code to target webkit browsers, then tell them to solely utilize the .svg file.

// Usage
@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {
  @font-face {
    font-family: ‘font-name';
    src: url(‘path-to-font/font-name.svg’) format(‘svg’);
    }
}

Answer 6

Had the same thing guys. Good in all browsers except chrome - even IE10 and 9 were fine. Dreamwaeevr CS6 also uses a similar version of fontsprings code, but has the svg at the end. Change it round for SVG before woff and ttf and all in the world is good. Tom is bang on with hos example there, in fact past that into your code and map paths to the fonts you need, and you're in business!