I have just realised something in the last few moments in regards to ClearType font use on Windows XP.  I commented earlier on the fact that I have always liked the way that the Safari web browser rendered web pages as they make the text look a lot smoother, something that is native on a mac.  Well it appears that windows has this ability too, its just turned off! 

I did not know that Windows had the ability to render fonts like this, like on the mac.  For a long time when I have been making website mock-ups in Photoshop I have turned off the anti-aliasing to get a better idea of how the site would look in reality.  It turns out that I could have given my eyes a visual feast all along.  For those of you that don’t know how to enable this, I will explain.  Take a look at this example text to see the difference enabling ClearType makes.

Now how to do it.  Either go the long way by going to Start->Control Panel->Display->Appearance->Effects and under the heading “use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts” choose cleartype and apply it.  You can also right click on the desktop and jump directly to the appearance tab.  Voila, you now have a nice looking screen display.

Lets just point out that I have now been using computers for years and XP for a fair while, I have only picked up on this now, why make life uglier than it should, enable cleartype !