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Comment by aparadja | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain what we're supposed to see here? Why is this interesting? I'm genuinely curious.

I THINK(but I am not sure because I didn't look too much) that what is going on is that those balls are moving at high speed by small amounts with css and what wants to be demonstrated is how different browser render floating points pixel values. I think. I might be wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

I think you're right but I'm more interested in all the cool cognitive/visual artefacts they're causing!

I can't find any difference in Chrome, but in FF there's a visible difference between the renderings.

Confirmed. Smooth & nice in Chrome, but not in FF.

It's the opposite. Chrome doesn't support the feature (especially if youre using canvas), you CAN see the difference in FF.

Chrome isnt smooth, it's jaggy. Think of sub-pixel rendering as anti-aliasing for fonts.

Ok, I get what you mean, but it certainly isn't jaggy. I'm running Chrome 31 on a MBP Maverick.

Chromes font rendering is very jaggy compared to firefox (which is almost certainly using Windows ClearType.)

Do you have subpixel font rendering enabled in OSX? Are there settings?

(My use: MBPr, Mavericks, Chrome Dev vs. Firefox 25.0.1)

I'll confirm there is a demonstrable difference between the two browsers, to my eye, being that in Chrome the odd numbers don't animate and in Firefox they do. However, I'd like to add that both are equally smooth and antialiased for me.

I'd also like to point out that Chrome font rendering can be smoothed/"crisped" by using in your CSS:

    -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
    -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden;

for future reference. (Note: this CSS example does not hold any bearing on the OP's example. For whatever reason, both fonts are equally smooth for me.)

Further, yes there are also settings in OSX for font smoothing. In System Preferences > General > Last checkbox is to enable/disable font smoothing.

Chrome is a bit jittery, but only on text in the vertical dimension. Safari does not have the same problem, but the text doesn't appear as clear.

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