Question about Chromium's DirectWrite flag

[GerryB]

I'm currently using IronPortable Version 51.0.2700.0 with the DirectWrite flag disabled. My eyesight is rather poor, and leaving DirectWrite enabled makes the fonts very difficult to read, so disabling that flag improves the font resolution dramatically. Chrome lately released Version 52 and the flag was removed, which has caused font rendering problems for a lot of people using Chromium-based browsers, especially users with visual impairments. The Vivaldi developers, for example, are losing some of their users due to this change by insisting on upgrading the Chromium engine; it now stands at 52.0.2743.83.

Will Iron's Chromium engine be likewise upgraded in the near future? If so, can that be done without losing the DirectWrite flag? If that flag cannot be retained, I will continue using Iron, which I like very much, but I will not update it beyond the current version.

[sabai]

I am really interested, too. Losing the option to disable the DirectWrite flag would be a real dealbreaker for me. I completely stopped using Chrome because of this.

[SRWare]

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... njdelkiock

Please try this

[GerryB]

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... njdelkiock

Please try this

Thanks! Yes, that does help by darkening the fonts considerably, both with and without DirectWrite enabled. When DW is enabled, however, some characters are still poorly rendered on some sites, depending on the font they use. My own font face settings in the browser can't override what a page specifies, and keeping DirectWrite disabled has helped quite a bit in those cases. I have the font rendering on my system (Windows 7 with ClearType enabled) adjusted exactly the way I want it, so there's no point in tweaking that.

As a comparison, I've never encountered any font rendering problems in Gecko-based browsers such as Firefox and K-Meleon, so maybe the Chromium developers need to stop removing what already works.