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Opened 3 years ago

Last modified 10 months ago

#55596 new enhancement

Twenty Twenty-Two: font-smoothing antialiasing setting

Reported by: happysadhu's profile happysadhu Owned by:
Milestone: Awaiting Review Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Bundled Theme Keywords: dev-feedback
Focuses: css Cc:

Description (last modified by sabernhardt)

Currently, at the top of 2022's style.css, font-smoothing is enabled by default by the following:

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

Critics of such anti-aliasing font smoothing say that it actually degrades the clarity of fonts on computer screens, particularly dark text on a light background. It switches rendering from subpixel-rendering to pixel level rendering:
https://usabilitypost.com/2012/11/05/stop-fixing-font-smoothing/
https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1170

Perhaps, font-smoothing should not be enabled by default in the default WordPress theme.

Cheers, Sam

Change History (3)

#1 @sabernhardt
3 years ago

  • Description modified (diff)
  • Summary changed from Should font-smoothing antialising setting in 2022 default theme be enabled? to Twenty Twenty-Two: font-smoothing antialiasing setting

#2 @sabernhardt
3 years ago

  • Focuses css added
  • Type changed from defect (bug) to enhancement

Thanks for the report!

Antialiased font smoothing has been set on body or the universal * selector and/or other elements in the default theme since Twenty Nineteen. (Before that, Twenty Thirteen to Twenty Fifteen had used it specifically for the Genericons icon font, which is probably fine.)

I'm switching to "enhancement" because the style was clearly desired when the themes were created, but this ticket is about reconsidering that decision.

Last edited 10 months ago by sabernhardt (previous) (diff)

#3 @karmatosed
10 months ago

  • Keywords dev-feedback added
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