Hey everyone,
Sorry if this had been posted countless times in the past, but I'm trying to make Chrome in Ubuntu to render pages like in Windows. I have mscorefonts installed and have changed the Chrome's font settings to match Window's. However, those settings are ignored on most pages. Replacing Ubuntu system fonts with MS fonts had worked to some extent, although the Subpixel doesn't work in this case.

Is there any way to make Chrome on Ubuntu render pages with a Windows look? I'm a beginner web-designer, and would really appreciate an answer.

PS: I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Hi there,

that's futile, AFAIS. It's not a reasonable assumption that a web page should look the same in all browsers. It should look good in all browsers, but each browser/GUI combination has its own characteristics that'll make up for some subtle difference. Font rendering is one of these aspects, precise reproduction of colors may be another.

As a web author, you can't control the way the OS (or its GUI, for that matter) renders text. you can't even be sure that the user's system has the fonts installed that you specify, so it will use a similar one based on the metrics. Note that similar is very probably not identical.

You'll have to accept this as a given fact. It's beyond your reach.

[X] Doc CPU

1. I am not sure I understand what you mean. Look like Windows in what way? And does that have anything to do with Web design?

2. Why would anyone finally free of Windows want to make anything else LOOK like windows? (Unless as a rather sadistic practical joke. I could get into that!)

Thank you for your input.

As I'm new to Linux I was at first worried about the difference of web-site display.

But people on other forums have said web-pages that look good on Linux will look good on Windows. Guess I should just stop worrying then.

Hi there,

you're welcome.

You don't have to be. You should do your best to create web pages that adhere to the standards (HTML/CSS spec), and if you're using some of the latest features (HTML 5 or CSS 3) that only the most up-to-date browsers support, you should make sure that browsers that don't support this feature still display something reasonable. In some situations, that could mean to dismiss a certain feature for older browsers.
For example, you might like to have boxes with rounded corners, on the other hand you know you still have a few visitors who use the ancient IE6, which doesn't know anything like border-radius. Instead of creating intricate graphical elements to imitate the effect, you might just give it a miss. IE6 will still display the page normally within that browser's means (in this case, with ordinary angled corners). This is what web developers call "graceful degradation".

Yes, I think so. After all, even on the same computer, different browsers (Opera, Firefox, Chrome) produce slightly different results. That's perfectly normal.

[X] Doc CPU

I think I now understand your question. See, in general the operating system does not render web pages. Browsers render web pages. You ( and I) carefully design your web pages to look and act in a certain way, but have no control over what software will render the page, exactly what standard it will support, or what settings the user running that browser will set...

In general, we have no control from the server end over what the page will look like or what will render it. One thing we can be sure of, Windows will not render web pages. Linux will not render web pages. Some browser will render the pages, and pretty much the same way as it would running on any other OS (in other words: google chrome on Linux will render it the same as google chrome on Windows).

As a web developer or designer it does not pay to waste time worrying about what OS the remote user might run, it is more important (as noted above by Doc) to build correct pages that degrade in a useful (primary goal) and attractive (secondary) fashion. CSS lends itself well to this, when used intelligently.

Microsoft WEB tools (at least the older ones) tend to build levels and cascades of tables within tables within tables. I prefer to avoid excessive use of tables, and frames entirely. The one advantage that has is that nearly everything renders tables about the same, but it is nearly impossible to maintain manually (ie. without the original tools used to create the page).
To build pages I can maintain with common tools I prefer to use CSS heavily. It is light, fast, but you must remain aware of how it degrades in browsers that do not support every feature.

Desired appearance, style, maintainability, degradation, these are your proper focus. The OS at the other end is really irrelevant.

Hi there,

yes, they do. But still, the GUI of the host system (which is considered a part of the OS by some people) has a big impact on the result. Even the user-side customization may have an influence on how a web page finally looks on the screen. For instance, a browser usually doesn't know anything about font smoothing (at least it shouldn't), but font metrics vary slightly if font smoothing like Microsofts SmearType is turned on or off, and so the dimensions of text boxes may change by a pixel or two. That appears to be a problem for web authors who think they must have control down to the last pixel. They shouldn't - they'd rather create a flexible "liquid" layout that adapts to its environment.

Basically yes. But since the original Windows fonts aren't identical to the fonts available on, say, a typical Gnome, KDE, or LXDE desktop, the result will look slightly different. And I do have to admit that the original Windows fonts (Arial, Verdana, Tahoma) produce better results than their counterparts from the mscorefonts package, which is a poorly designed imitation. Only after I copied the Microsoft Truetype files from my Windows PC on my Linux box, the characters looked a lot better.

Not only Microsoft tools. It regularly sends me shivers down my back when I have to work on HTML files created by Dreamweaver.

Exactly my strategy, too. And it's annoying that so many books, tutorials and seminars still start teaching that stuff: Using frames and tables for layout purposes, using obsolete and deprecated HTML attributes to control appearance, and they only mention in passing that there is a thing called CSS. It's really hard to get rid of these bad habits - and on the other hand, using semantically appropriate HTML and extensive CSS can be so intuitive if you learn it that way right from the start.

[X] Doc CPU