Created attachment 289646
Hinting comparison with subpixel rendering and cairo 1.4/1.5
Apparently the difference is related to the cairo version. The attached screenshot was done on Ubuntu 7.10.
The Ubuntu version there is 1.4.10, while Firefox cairo version should be close to the snapshot version 1.5.2.
For none or slight hinting, the rendering is similar between cairo 1.4 and 1.5, but for medium and full the 1.5 cairo version is a bit more "aggressive", which explains why the fonts looks thinner.
You could upgrade your cairo version to 1.5 on your system if you want more consistency between Firefox 3 and the other applications.
On the screenshot, we can see that there is no difference between medium and full hinting on both cairo versions. My opinion is that it would be great to have the medium hinting with cairo 1.5 look like the full/medium one of cairo 1.4. This would make a more progressive transition between slight and full, for people who prefer an intermediate setting.
Created attachment 289646
Hinting comparison with subpixel rendering and cairo 1.4/1.5
Apparently the difference is related to the cairo version. The attached screenshot was done on Ubuntu 7.10.
The Ubuntu version there is 1.4.10, while Firefox cairo version should be close to the snapshot version 1.5.2.
For none or slight hinting, the rendering is similar between cairo 1.4 and 1.5, but for medium and full the 1.5 cairo version is a bit more "aggressive", which explains why the fonts looks thinner.
You could upgrade your cairo version to 1.5 on your system if you want more consistency between Firefox 3 and the other applications.
On the screenshot, we can see that there is no difference between medium and full hinting on both cairo versions. My opinion is that it would be great to have the medium hinting with cairo 1.5 look like the full/medium one of cairo 1.4. This would make a more progressive transition between slight and full, for people who prefer an intermediate setting.