Why is Midori's font rendering so much nicer than Firefox's?

[leonbnu]

I am running the new LMDE release. I noticed that my firefox's font rendering is kinda fuzzy and thin compared to Midori. Midori's font rendering looks cleaner and smoother. I have attached the screen shots of both. Both of them are using the default font setttings. So how can I get firefox to render like Modori?

Thanks!

[rivenathos]

Your Firefox fonts look better to me than your Midori ones in those screen shots. Just my opinion.

That being said, there is a Firefox font tweak I have used previously with excellent results. This website has some general instructions if you want to try it:

http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/07/howto-fix-firefox-35s-font-hinting.html

[secipolla]

IDK how Firefox from the LMDE repo is compiled.
I have here in Debian both FF 4 (from Mozilla) and Midori from git. While Midori renders fonts very well, FF's are awful. I was told that FF from mozilla is compiled without libcairo support but Iceweasel is compiled with this support and renders fonts better.

[leonbnu]

Thank you. Iceweasel does look better!

a screen shot from Iceweasel:

[rivenathos]

If you ever test out pure Debian, you will love Iceweasel. Yes, I know Iceweasel and Firefox are the same thing, but Iceweasel has a few tweaks by the Debian folks. I had hoped Iceweasel would be the default in LMDE, but I can understand the Firefox decision. At least it was an easy install for you.

[randomizer]

Iceweasel is usually a few versions behind the latest Mozilla stable build. You can compile Firefox with libcairo support I think, you just need to set the right mozconfig flags.

[leonbnu]

I guess I will stick with Iceweasel, too much hassel to recompile firefox everytime.

[stanf]

Indeed, this is an excellent demonstration of the problem I've also been struggling with for weeks. I'm surprised there is not more commentary on the degraded font quality in LMDE/Firefox.

Using LMDE 201012/64 bit -- I've tried Midori also and I get the beautiful rendering you have shown here. However, my results with IceWeasel are not as good as yours.

I'd like to stick with Firefox -- can anyone point me to a guide for recompiling Firefox with libcairo font support?