One of the biggest annoyances in Internet Explorer 9 is the blurry text. Now this does not happen on every system, but if you have this problem, you will certainly know about it. The text is and fonts can be so blurred that it will give you a headache.
Microsoft is using a new rendering technology in Internet Explorer 9, hence the fuzzy fonts. We won’t get into the technical details of why this doesn’t work, let’s just look at how to fix this nasty problem.
Fix Blurry Fonts in IE9
The fix that we have found most efficient is to turn on compatibility view for all websites. Some users have had success with altering their ClearType settings, but that did not work for us.
To turn on compatibility view, just do the following:
Click Tools -> Compatibility View Settings
Check the box that says “Display all websites in Compatibility View” and click “Close”.
Now you should see normal text again with IE9.
UPDATE:
There is a download available from the Microsoft site that is supposed to fix this problem. Thanks to Christhian for mentioning this update.
You can get it from the Microsoft site:
Microsoft – Fix for blurry fonts in IE 9
Note: You will need to reboot after installing this update and unfortunately we have not seen any positive effect from the update.
Thanks for the hint, but sorry, it didn’t work for me!
I even tried to turn off clear type, edge softening and visual styles – but I didn’t succeed to render IE9 “normal” again! I guess I will stop using IE one day…
Sorry, did´t work.
I found it better with the compatibility view. Most of the text now looks ok. Why has IE put in this type of setting?
[...] Re: blurry text- please help! Hi I'm not sure but this may have been the answer. Mike Fix Blurry Text in Internet Explorer 9 [...]
Actually for me this seems to be the only thing that works. Turning on compatibility mode for all sites seems to display fonts normally. They look strange though when using IE9 standard setup. New York Times website is a great example. There is supposed to be a fix for this Windows6.1-KB2545698-x86.msu but it doesn’t seem to work for me. It’s got something to do with the way that core fonts are now rendered on IE9. It no longer uses GDI but instead DirectDraw. I don’t know I’ll just use Firefox. Running IE9 in compatibility mode turns it to IE8 literally, some sites can tell that you’re running it in compatibility mode, Gmail is one that figures it out.
Cristhian,
thanks for the update. I have updated the post with your info.
Just tried installing that fix and it didn’t help over here either. Firefox still looks much better, unless compatibility view is being used. Anyone else had luck with that update?
I also have the same problem but it only happens in IE 9
The fix update dident work for me. But i found out another wierd thing.
When i enable compatibel mode for all websites then the text still is a bit blurry, but if i resize the Ie 9 browser to fullscreen and change it to window mode again, then the text gets normal like it shold be.
But if i disable compatibel mode and resize the browser again then the text stays blurry.
So it has something to do with compatibel mode and resize the browser to fullscreen and then window size..
The fix from Microsoft doesn’t work the only solution is to keep the browser in compatability mode.
The last thing you would want to do is to turn on compatibility view for any website (and for all websites in particular). This feature will render any website, to which the compatibility view was applied to, as if it’s viewed in IE7. In other words, when you apply compatibility view to a website, in effect you are not using IE9 at all, but you are using it as if it was IE7.
As a developer myself, I can assure you this causes far greater problems than you would like to know. The fact that people actually are using this really bad feature without understanding what they are doing to their browsing experience, proves the point that Microsoft should never have offered this feature in the first place for anyone to randomly click on it.
When you view websites in the year 2012 in IE7 (or IE8 for that matter) – which is what you’re doing when you’re using the compatibility view, you are not able to view the website the way it was intended to be viewed, with features such as gradients, rounded corners, shadows, correct margins and positions of elements and the website would look as if it’s from the early 1990s (IE9 also doesn’t fully support all features as other browsers do). Also, features and functions such as those based on javascript won’t work, and you will not even know what you are missing, because you won’t see those features are there. So my advice to you is instead of struggling with IE9 (and IE8), just don’t use it at all.
It will take you between 20 to 25 SECONDS to install a modern and normal browser that fits the year 2012 (that is not Internet Explorer), and your life will change forever. Problem solved.