Fonts looks different in Firefox and Chrome

Question

I am using Google Web Font's PT-sans

font-family: 'PT Sans',Arial,serif;

but it looks different in Chrome and Firefox

Is there anything that I need to add so that it looks same in all browsers?

Answer 1

As of 2014, Chrome still has a known bug where if the webfont being used has a local copy installed, it choses to use the local version, hence, causing OP rendering issues.

To fix this, you can do the following:

First, target Chrome Browser or OSX (For me, the issue was with OSX Chrome only). I have used this simple JS to get quick Browser/OS's detection, you can chose to do this in any other way you're used to:

https://raw.github.com/rafaelp/css_browser_selector/master/css_browser_selector.js

Now that you can target a Browser/OS, create the following 'new' font:

@font-face {
    font-family: 'Custom PT Sans';    
    src: url(http://themes.googleusercontent.com/static/fonts/ptsans/v6/jKK4-V0JufJQJHow6k6stALUuEpTyoUstqEm5AMlJo4.woff) format('woff');
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}

The font URL is the same your browser uses when embedding the google webfont. If you use any other font, just copy and change the URL accordingly.

Get the URL here http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,700&subset=latin,latin-ext

You may also rename your @font-face custom font-family alias.

Create a simple CSS rule to use that font targeting Browser/OS or both:

.mac .navigation a {    
    font-family: "Custom PT Sans", "PT Sans", sans-serif;
}

Or

.mac.webkit p {
    font-family: "Custom PT Sans", "PT Sans", sans-serif;
}

Done. Just apply the font-family rule wherever you need to.

Answer 2

css reset may fix the problem, I am not sure .

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/reset/

Answer 3

For the ChunkFive font from FontSquirrel, specifying "font-weight: normal;" stopped Firefox's rendering from looking like ass when used in a header. Looks like Firefox was trying to apply a fake bold to a font that only has one weight, while Chrome was not.

Answer 4

Different browsers (and FWIW, different OSes) use different font rendering engines, and their results are not meant to be identical. As already pointed out, you can't do anything about it (unless, obviously, you can replace text with images or flash or implement your own renderer using javascript+canvas - the latter being a bit overboard if you ask me).

Answer 5

I had the same issue for a couple of months. Finally, it got worked by disabling below settings in Chrome browser's settings.

Set "Accelerated 2D Canvas" to "Disabled" (In the browser's address bar, go to chrome://flags#disable-accelerated-2d-canvas, change the setting, relaunch the browser.)

Since the fix for this issue has clearly changed, I would suggest in general turning off any hardware-accelerated text-rendering/2D-rendering features in the future if this fix stops working.

On Google Chrome 55, this issue appears to have cropped up again. As anticipated, the fix was disabling hardware acceleration, it just changed locations.

The new fix (for me) appears to be:

Settings -> Show advanced settings... -> System UNCHECK "Use hardware acceleration when available"

https://superuser.com/questions/821092/chromes-fonts-look-off

Answer 6

There are a few fixes. But usually it can be fixed with:

html {
  -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
  -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
}

Sometimes it can be due to font-weight. If you are using a custom font with @font-face make sure your font-weight syntax is correct. In @font-face the idea of the font-weight/font-style properties are to keep your font-family name across different @font-face declarations while using different font-weight or font-style so those values work properly in CSS (and load your custom font -- not "fake bold").

I've seen -webkit-text-stroke: 0.2px; mentioned to thicken webkit fonts, but I think you probably won't need this if you use the first piece of code I gave.