IE7 has some strange and quite annoying behaviour. After installing it and rebooting your computer, you may notice all of your fonts look fuzzy. This is because [this beta of] IE7 includes new anti-aliasing software called ClearType, which is applied not just on Internet Explorer's fonts, but on any software that uses IE to render HTML, like Outlook and Outlook Express, Windows Explorer, MSN Messenger ... etc.

Here's the annoying thing - on my monitor (and countless others - read these comments) ClearType fonts look absolutely awful. It makes me squint and actually hurts my eyes after 10 minutes of exposure to it. And, the IE installer does not ask you if you want ClearType enabled, it just installs it and you have to lump it. It's basically a system-wide change to your fonts and display options, without any notificication to the user, and with no means to configure it or switch it off in Control Panel.

But before you uninstall IE7 in a flash, you might like to know there is actually a control panel applet for tuning Cleartype, but it's a seperate download from Microsoft called the ClearType Tuner Powertoy. It allows you to optimise ClearType for your monitor, or if it really doesn't look good at all, you can just select a box to turn ClearType off.

Microsoft, if you're reading this, please make this powertoy part of the IE7 installer and run it as a wizard the first time IE7 is launched? It will save users a lot of headaches - literally.

Technorati Tags: , ,