Just upgraded from office 2003 to 2007 and whadayaknow

[D]

Yep, the same blurry filters that made me uninstall IE7 and revert back to IE6.
I cannot stand this. It's like somebody connected my pc via composite to my monitor.
What a bunch of idiots. Hey, here's an idea! Let's make everything ugglier. damn.
OK, whatever, one more month and I have another job anyway working on macs. Did m$ do this for mac too? Those guys are crazy.

[Ed Oscuro]

Explain. If you please.

IE6, wow. Firefox 2.0, even...I don't know, there. This can't be good.

[D]

Yeah sorry, I'm so infuriated. When I (back then) installed IE7 I noticed they messed with the way letters are shown. In IE6 the letters are all one color, In IE7 they did something, hard to explain.
Let's take this S
Now on IE6 all white in that letter is the same color, same degradation. But in IE7 this is not the case. The white pixels next to the blue pixels will get affected. It's like ssome kind of effect. where the transition from white to blue is done gradualy. At one point I made a side by side comparison of IE6 and IE7. Well at least this is my interpretation, there must be some different technical background to all of this.
Anyway, it was no real issue for me as I just kept on using IE6 (not as secure as ie7/8 I know...)
But now I ad to upgrade from office 2003 to 2007 and it also did outlook. Now in Outlook I get the same filter bullshit that's in IE7. noooooooooooooooooo. it is making my eyes bleed, because now you cannot focus as easy. just like composite.

[szycag]

Does turning off smoothing edges of fonts in Display Properties / Appearance / Effects, help? Didn't know if it was a program setting or falling back on your windows settings.

[cools]

Yeah sorry, I'm so infuriated. When I (back then) installed IE7 I noticed they messed with the way letters are shown. In IE6 the letters are all one color, In IE7 they did something, hard to explain.
Let's take this S
Now on IE6 all white in that letter is the same color, same degradation. But in IE7 this is not the case. The white pixels next to the blue pixels will get affected. It's like ssome kind of effect. where the transition from white to blue is done gradualy. At one point I made a side by side comparison of IE6 and IE7. Well at least this is my interpretation, there must be some different technical background to all of this.
Anyway, it was no real issue for me as I just kept on using IE6 (not as secure as ie7/8 I know...)
But now I ad to upgrade from office 2003 to 2007 and it also did outlook. Now in Outlook I get the same filter bullshit that's in IE7. noooooooooooooooooo. it is making my eyes bleed, because now you cannot focus as easy. just like composite.

What monitor are you using?

You're describing sub-pixel anti-aliasing (aka "Clear Type"). This looks great on an LCD, but shockingly bad on a CRT.

[crithit5000]

Does turning off smoothing edges of fonts in Display Properties / Appearance / Effects, help? Didn't know if it was a program setting or falling back on your windows settings.

IE7/8 both ignore the system setting for clear type. It's changeable in both though, under Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Multimedia->Always use Clear Type for HTML.

[D]

This is what I mean:

a normal screenshot. the letters should be all black, no orange, light blue pixel.
This is what makes my eyes bleed. Quick somebody make a screenshot of Outlook 2003 to compare.
Where exactly can I turn this off? maybe there is a place? or perhaps only in registry?

Does turning off smoothing edges of fonts in Display Properties / Appearance / Effects, help? Didn't know if it was a program setting or falling back on your windows settings.

I have all effects turned off.

Does turning off smoothing edges of fonts in Display Properties / Appearance / Effects, help? Didn't know if it was a program setting or falling back on your windows settings.

IE7/8 both ignore the system setting for clear type. It's changeable in both though, under Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Multimedia->Always use Clear Type for HTML.

OK, thanks, but I do not have IE7/8 at the moment, but will that really fix the problem? if so thanks, perhaps I will try it one day. I am using 2 tft (lcd?) monitors. Outlook 2003/IE6 look great! Outlook 2007/IE7,8 look like composite.

[crithit5000]

IE6 look great!

As a web developer/designer, I take great offense by this statement.

And yeah, that sounds like your issue. Apparently there's a "non-recommended" fix for Office 2007 as well:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926705

[D]

well, how misleading is that term cleartype? it makes it fuzzy and blurry and makes my eyes bleed. [somewhere in a room 2/3 years ago: Hey, let's call it cleartype]
So why would you take offense in that? The screenshot should explain it all. Why am I the only one bitching about that? Is my vision so incredible?

EDIT:
Jezus crist; same with excel (and probably all other office programms) Are m$ going to be selling glasses? In that case, food idea. Get everybody half blind then sell them...glasses. Those guys are so smart and evil.


EDIT2, just tried that program, but that's for Windows itself. it does nothing for Office. Thanks for caring. Hell, I cana still do the web version of outlook in my IE6

[crithit5000]

I don't actually take any offense, but IE6 does so much retarded shit wrong with rendering pages that it's hard not to take potshots at people who still like such a travesty. Especially considering there's a market of 6 million internet browsers out there.

Also, you should've probably tried method #2 in that link, as it actually shuts Clear Type off in Office.

[cools]

I absolutely adore Clear Type Makes things far more readable for me.

Note you need to set it up correctly for your monitor or it will look terrible, and the monitor needs to be running at native res (though I guess you're running native anyway otherwise you'd be complaining about blurriness).

[D]

you should've probably tried method #2 in that link, as it actually shuts Clear Type off in Office.

You are 100% right, tried, method 2. my screen is again VGA clear to read. My eyes have just stopped bleeding and I can get on with my life. Thanks for all the help everybody. Very happy now. This is the After shot:

[ASK]

Makes my eyes bleed too, personally. I use a mac at work, so I've adjusted to it since it's fucking ubiquitous throughout the operating system and I've never been able to turn it off completely, but at home, can't handle it.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think the hidden story here is that nobody can really complain about the assumption that everybody is using LCD monitors now - because everybody is (except a few of us).

The big story is that you have to pay attention to DPI, or Dots Per Inch. You set it too low (or use antiquated software), which using insanely tiny fonts exclusively will also accomplish, and you're putting your eyes through a lot more work.

ClearType does look terrible in D's blown-up examples, but the DPI there is so laughably low (lower than the standard for recent applications) that the fonts will look terrible no matter what. Any decent modern LCD screen (even a screen I use occasionally made in 2003) should have text set large enough so that the subpixel rendering is not splitting letters like that. Even tiny text at the top of the Shmups layout (i.e. the FAQ, Search, Members, Control Panel and other links) is 50% bigger, at roughly 6 pixels wide.

Also, taking a screenshot and blowing it up doesn't make sense because you're converting subpixels to full pixels, so of course it's going to look much worse because the process isn't being allowed to work.

I run 1600x1200 and subpixel rendering / ClearType seems to subjectively double or even triple the DPI resolution of text, and helps define the edges of characters much better. On my 17" even putting my nose inches from the monitor doesn't show the patterns seen here because the blue / pink subpixels are treated correctly; taking a screenshot and blowing it up doesn't make sense because you're converting subpixels.

Solutions:
- Don't be stingy with resolutions within programs when you can set them.
- Get a modern OS and applications that don't have terrible fixed-DPI elements (XP is still workable but it's a lot more eyestrain-inducing than Vista or Win7 which have smarter fonts, XP and earlier scale screen elements wrong within Windows, just try increasing the size of fonts for Windows and enjoy everything looking eerie and wrong)
I don't think the monitor is really the issue here, because a newer monitor with a higher DPI would just make the text smaller. It would make the ClearType effect less evident but with these terrible DPI settings you're not getting any more readable text.