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.