Mac vs PC

[GreNME]

Same machine? No.
Same hardware? No.
Same display hardware settings? No.
Same browser settings? No.

Evidence that an OS changes how web pages look? No.

Except that I showed an example in the screenshots I gave, where the fonts are clearly rendering slightly differently.

Hardware has jack to do with it. Display settings (as far as resolution or windowing effects) have pretty much nothing to do with it (though you're getting warmer). The browser settings are exactly the same.

Evidence you have even the slightest clue of what I was describing: none.

MacOS, Windows, and Linux all anti-alias differently from each other. This means that fonts-- even the exact same font styles-- display slightly differently. Especially with serif and sans serif fonts-- two of the most popular kinds-- each OS displays them to the user differently (because of the OS, not the browser). Buttons called by the code to be rendered are each done differently (in the style of their respective OS). There used to be far more differences, especially before 10.2 on the Mac and Linux kernels prior to about 2001 or so, but since somewhere between 2002 and 2005, all three OSes I showed have come closer to each other in system-wide rendering and don't vary quite as much as they used to. However, when dealing with specialty fonts or input-heavy interfaces, how the OS renders the browser's display of the web page still matters, and still requires platform cross-checking for consistency.

Throwing red herrings out there to avoid addressing the point I made is useless. That kuroyume0161 has confirmed what I said shows I'm not making this up, and I'm sure other front-end web developers could also verify what I'm saying when it comes to cross-checking consistency on a project. This is a common, long-standing, and often important professional practice with web development, though it may not seem like a big deal to the "look at pictures of my cat" website-building crowd.

 

[D'rok]

No, not entirely. The OS plays a role in how something will look. I'll try to show you. I'll use randi.org as the base web address for comparison.

Mac OS (Leopard) and Firefox 3.5
http://image.grenme.com/Mac-FF_page.png

Windows 7 and Firefox 3.5
http://image.grenme.com/Win7-FF_page.png

Ubuntu Linux and Firefox 3.5
http://image.grenme.com/Ubuntu-FF_page.png

Same browser engine, same web page, yet the font weights and sizes show up differently, and if you took your time to go over the screenshots you would see other minor things that are slightly different. And mind you, this is the exact same browsing engine on three different platforms, so claiming one browser is more "correct" than the other doesn't fly in this case. The three differences in appearance are almost completely attributable to the platform the browser is on.

Professional front-end web developers-- trust me, I live with one-- need to be able to compare how their web pages look across platforms as well as across browsers in order to keep their pages as consistent as possible with the most regularly-used browsers out there (including IE). Randi's site happens to be among those whose site developers did a very good job at keeping it consistent cross-browser and cross-platform, and yet there are still obvious (but not big) differences between them. These are differences that can't be coded out by developers of the website front-end, because they're inherent differences in how the operating system displays the desktop and application environments on each platform.


Also, the Acid3 test is for browsers, not for web pages and front-end development. The W3C standards are for website front-end developers to use as a baseline, but again in the end what needs to be coded is for the intended audience and the browsers they'll be using.

The Ubuntu portion of that comparison is not valid unless you install msttcorefonts. For legal reasons, Ubuntu can't bundle those fonts with the OS.

 

[GreNME]

The Ubuntu portion of that comparison is not valid unless you install msttcorefonts. For legal reasons, Ubuntu can't bundle those fonts with the OS.

It's plenty valid. I installed no extra fonts or packages in any of the setups I displayed, and in each they are as vanilla as can be expected.

And as I already explained, it wouldn't matter because Linux, OS X, and Windows all render the same exact fonts slightly differently anyway. It's not the font packages that do it, it's the rendering subsystem.

 

[D'rok]

It's plenty valid. I installed no extra fonts or packages in any of the setups I displayed, and in each they are as vanilla as can be expected.

And as I already explained, it wouldn't matter because Linux, OS X, and Windows all render the same exact fonts slightly differently anyway. It's not the font packages that do it, it's the rendering subsystem.

You misunderstand. Ubuntu is displaying different fonts because it does not have the necessary fonts installed. It is not rendering the same fonts differently. To see how Ubuntu would render the fonts, you first have to install them. Both MacOS and Windows come with the necessary fonts installed out of the box.

 

[GreNME]

I don't misunderstand anything. I know that Linux doesn't come out of the box with all the fonts that Macs and Windows do. However, even with the same exact fonts Windows, OS X, and Linux display differently. Each platform's desktop drawing process is different from the others. Completely different mechanisms for rendering the desktop between each platform. Even if I installed all the font packages available, tweaked the video settings just-so, or even used multiple different desktop managers to verify, the fact is that the desktop renders differently on Linux, OS X, and Windows.

 

[D'rok]

I don't misunderstand anything. I know that Linux doesn't come out of the box with all the fonts that Macs and Windows do. However, even with the same exact fonts Windows, OS X, and Linux display differently. Each platform's desktop drawing process is different from the others. Completely different mechanisms for rendering the desktop between each platform. Even if I installed all the font packages available, tweaked the video settings just-so, or even used multiple different desktop managers to verify, the fact is that the desktop renders differently on Linux, OS X, and Windows.

I agree. But your screenshot example didn't demonstrate this. It demonstrated the free fonts that Ubuntu substitutes when asked to render an uninstalled proprietary font.

 

[GreNME]

Okay, I agree there. I posted a vanilla Ubuntu install.

 

[elgarak]

I fail to see how different anti-aliasing would change fonts' weights and sizes... Proper anti-aliasing should not change those, and thereby should not affect the layout/relative positioning of text and other elements.

In the examples, different fonts are used (with sans-serif in the Mac and Win, serif on the Ubuntu example). Not that I say that a web-developer can do anything about that, and have to check the layout on different OS/browser/setting-combinations.

 

[GreNME]

I fail to see how different anti-aliasing would change fonts' weights and sizes... Proper anti-aliasing should not change those, and thereby should not affect the layout/relative positioning of text and other elements.

There is no "proper" way to do such a thing. There are different methods for different platforms.

In the examples, different fonts are used (with sans-serif in the Mac and Win, serif on the Ubuntu example). Not that I say that a web-developer can do anything about that, and have to check the layout on different OS/browser/setting-combinations.

The fonts display differently between Mac and Win, and you're correct that a web developer can do little about the platform difference. However, the reason for web developers to cross-check is to make sure they're using fonts or styles of input that follow enough of a lowest-common denominator to be consistent across platforms, while still catering to the newer and flashier features that the recent supported browsers being used can provide. It's a balancing act that is simply part of the professional process, and is fairly transparent to end users. Front-end development for client-side software also follows these practices, and the first example that comes to mind is the Filezilla FTP client, which is remarkably consistent across platforms but written differently on the front end for each.

Developers do cross-checking (when applicable) because it provides you, the user, with consistency and ease of use. Your failure to see any reason for it is a failure to recognize the real work that professionals go through to provide you with consistency and transparency.