Comment 5 for bug 189720

I have the same problem using firefox 3.0~alpha8-0 (included in Kubuntu 7.10 and Ubuntu 7.10 repos) and firefox-3.0b2pre.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2 (yesterday build). In firefox 2.0.0.8 the fonts look great. It seems that firefox 3 is beign too agressive hinting fonts because they look too thin compared to the rest of the applications.

I have tried all possible combinations of hinting/antialias using the KDE font preferences. In addition, I have tried echoing the preferences:

echo Xft.antialias: 1 | xrdb -merge

echo Xft.hintstyle: hintnone | xrdb -merge

echo Xft.hintstyle: hintslight | xrdb -merge

echo Xft.hintstyle: hintmedium | xrdb -merge

echo Xft.hintstyle: hintfull | xrdb -merge

The best combination is Xft.antialias: 1 and Xft.hintstyle: hintfull because with these options the fonts are antialiased, but look too thin. All the other options produce ugly fonts. BTW, I use subpixel hinting (Xft.rgba: rgb).

I can provide more information for hunting this bug.