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Chrome gets sharp after dumping 30-year-old Windows technology


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Guest LilBambi
"Chrome 37 adds support for DirectWrite, an API on Windows for clear, high-quality text rendering even on high-DPI displays," said Emil Eklund in a July 17 blog post.

 

Microsoft introduced the DirectWrite API with Windows 7, which shipped in the fall of 2009, and back-ported the technology to Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) at the same time with what it called a Platform Update. Windows XP, the now-retired operating system -- but one that still powers one-in-four personal computers worldwide -- does not support DirectWrite.

 

Prior to the switch to DisplayWrite, Chrome used Microsoft's Graphics Device Interface (GDI), which was a core component of Windows since the graphical user interface's (GUI) debut in late 1985. Microsoft had been working on GDI for at least two years before that.

 

Chrome 36, the current version out of Google's Stable build channel, continues to use GDI to render text on Windows.

 

Hmmm, where does that leave Macs and Linux/UNIX OSes? No mention of that in this article....

 

Version 37 should ship between the end of August and mid-September.

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so this is their excuse for looking poorer than the other browsers? I'm not buying, as Chromium and Opera text looks better than g-chrome.

well, different at any rate - "better" to me.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest LilBambi

You could well be right, but sometimes things do affect other OSes that they don't intend them to affect.

 

We will know for sure when version 37 ships sometime between the end of August and mid-September.

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