While I was writing some stuff here on Super User, I had to use my alternate guest account to write. I then noticed that the font that was present on the editing box and also in the '< code >' snippets was slightly off.
The font in both cases is Consolas. I have checked it through the Inspector tool in Firefox. Here is what it appears on both accounts, using the "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" expression. The font on the guest account seems a lot coarser and bolder than the thin font I've become accustomed to working to, despite being the same.
Why is this happening and how can I change it so that it matches the User Account font? I am using Windows XP.
Answer
After concluding that the font is the same and that its rendering was the only thing off, I checked the Wikipedia entry on the font. Consolas is a font designed and bundled with the newer Windows systems, that is also bundled with certain Microsoft Office products that I might have installed.
One of its key features is the use of the ClearType rendering technology. ClearType attempts to improve the rendering of the font by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation. I was under the impression that ClearType was only implemented on Windows Vista and later, when Wikipedia corrected me: ClearType does exist within Windows XP, it just isn't turned on by default.
After some search, this Microsoft KB page appeared, detailing how to enable ClearType on Windows XP. Quoting:
To use ClearType for screen fonts:
- Click Start, click Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
- On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
- Click to select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box, and then click ClearType in the list.
As it turned out, the Guest Account had the last option turned on, on the Default setting. Simply disabling the option and applying the changes worked and restored the font rendering.
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