IE "Clear"Type lolz

Don't these idiots running around in IE team actually test the IE? I mean, do they even use it? The IE font smoothing is a cluster f*** if you use RDP.

I mean seriously, I even LIKE the ClearType but can NOT use IE AT ALL via RDP.

If I turn off the font smoothing when connecting to RDP... the IE damn better respect that setting as well.

Whoever made this decision, one or 20000 people... they ALL should be fired. YES, they all should be fired.

IE feels like I'm buying a crappy sausage from a street corner... zero quality check.

I used to absolutely love IE... the IE team FORCED me to use Opera. I didn't go to Opera by choice.

...and don't try to defend the IE team, sure they bring all sorts of bells and whistles, oooh look, I can haz 1000 fishes in my bowl... how about you get the freaking basics right first... we'll talk about the fish bowl after that.

i can haz spellacheck? pleese?

2 hours ago,turrican wrote

Whoever made this decision, one or 20000 people... they ALL should be fired. YES, they all should be fired.

No, that's not overreacting at all.

I think the problem is the RDP which limits the color depth.

Seems fine for me. But usually I don't use pointless web over RDP, kinda stupid IMO. Unless I want to check which website has been blocked by the network, I wouldn't do those kind of proxy hack.

5 minutes ago,magicalclick wrote

What's RDP, sorry too lazy to Bing or read the wiki.

i think RDP - Remote DesktoP

@magicalclick: What the heck are you talking about? Using web over RDP is stupid? I suppose this shows the level of "knowledge" in Channel 9 these days. *lol* Ever heard of virtualization or a virtual desktop?

Wow, just wow. 

2 hours ago,turrican wrote

Wow, just wow. 

That's what I've been thinking throughout this entire thread.

5 hours ago,ailatzis wrote

*snip*

i think RDP - Remote DesktoP

RDP is actually Remote Desktop Protocol, the protocol underlying Remote Desktop (not surprisingly), but it's often used as a synonym for the feature itself.

So this isn't really a problem with IE, it's a problem with RD's display ability. Misdirected anger I think.

Herbie

@Dr Herbie: Kind of; if IE is not adhering to the RDP setting to disable font smoothing, then that's IE's fault.

@Sven Groot: Oh I see; IE missed a configuration that creates a problem to a tiny minority if IE users, prompting out-of-proportion nerd-rage?

Herbie

@Dr Herbie: And I will damn well make a thread about it on a forum that other nerds read! Maybe they can join the crusade,..

Why do you need to RDP to a webserver anyway? Code gone bad?

6 hours ago,turrican wrote

@magicalclick: What the heck are you talking about? Using web over RDP is stupid? I suppose this shows the level of "knowledge" in Channel 9 these days. *lol* Ever heard of virtualization or a virtual desktop?

Wow, just wow. 

Yeah, I should check my hotmail via Android RDP client, via my machine1 OS1 doing another RDP client, via machine 1 VM OS2's IE browser. Better yet, I should access hotmail passing through 10 VM machines via RDP and finally use the IE at very end.

Like I said, I only do it to check network setup.

@magicalclick:  And I have many users that spend their entire day in a RDP session, be that user that access a machine via VDI, work inside Remote desktop session from one of our RD servers, or even testers that are using machines via VS's Lab Management.  All use IE over RDP for perfectly valid reasons.

That said I've never had a complaint about fonts in IE, but most of those users arn't geeks.

17 hours ago,Magic​Andre1981 wrote

I think the problem is the RDP which limits the color depth.

Not quite.

In ye olden days, writing a "Designed for Terminal Services"-compliant application meant using GDI properly, which meant that RDP could make use of GDI redirection. So rather than sending a bitmap of text down the pipe (slow) it instead just sent text strings and the client rendered it. Everyone's happy.

When ClearType came along, for some reason the RDP folks decided to render RDP at the server-side and just send the bitmap down. The reasoning being that the majority of RDP users were on reasonably high-bandwidth connections (either home broadband or a LAN) so the expense of sending an extra few kilobytes was negligible.

IE messes up things a bit more by now doing everything using GPU acceleration, but emulates it in software if there's no DirectWrite-compliant hardware around (such as when using the rdpdd) which also slows things down.

Now I also understand that under certain circumstances that when using GDI (or was it GDI+) with ClearType disabled, the server sends down a 1-bit bitmap for text (useful if the fonts aren't available on the client, I guess). This is considerably faster to send than sending the raw bitmap of the display (at 16, 24, or 32 bits). However when you use ClearType you can no-longer represent characters using one bit, you need to use at least 24 bits to capture every nuance of the sub-pixel rendering.

...or something. I await AndyC to correct me on some obscure (or major) detail.

It looks fine to me.  http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/2145/ieonrdp.jpg

This is with font-smoothing turned off. I usually have it turned on, and to be honest, I can't tell the difference.

1 hour ago,cbae wrote

It looks fine to me.  http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/2145/ieonrdp.jpg

This is with font-smoothing turned off. I usually have it turned on, and to be honest, I can't tell the difference.

That's because there is no difference. Look at the desktop icon text: it isn't anti-aliased, which implies the system (or RDP) anti-aliasing option is disabled (either Standard Antialiasing or ClearType) but the text in IE is subpixel anti-aliased, which means it is disregarding an explicit system setting.