The Friendliest Computer Club in Ventura County Since 1986
CLEAR TYPE
This is a reprint from the October 2005 issue of TOE (The Outer Edge)
By Jim Thornton
If you do a lot of Internet surfing and reading on your computer's screen, you may have noticed that your eyes are getting tired. Several years ago, the eyestrain problem was first noticed with the introduction of the LCD (liquid crystal display) screens - the screens used on laptops and flat-panel monitors.
With the introduction of the Windows XP operating system, Microsoft added a feature to help reduce the eyestrain. This feature is called ClearType, and what it does is to greatly smooth the jagged edges of the individual characters. This increases the sharpness of the characters and makes reading easier and improves your reading speed.
The individual characters on your computer screen are composed of very small dots called pixels. The word pixel is a contraction of the words "picture element." To demonstrate how this works, visualize making the capital letter A out of a child's set of building blocks. Notice how rough or stair-stepped the sides of the letter are. Microsoft's solution was to create sub-pixels or smaller building blocks to be used to fill in or smooth the rough space between or next to the regular sized blocks.
Let's use the ClearType feature and see if the text on your monitor looks cleared. If you don't like it, you can always remove this feature.
- 1. Right click on any blank space on the desktop, and a small titleless menu appears.
- 2. Left click on Properties and a "Display Properties" window appears.
- 3. Click on the Appearance tab and an "Appearance" window appears within the "Display Properties" window.
- 4. Click on the box titled "Effects" and an "Effects" window appears on top of the "Display Properties" window.
- 5. Click on the small empty square box to the left of "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" to place a checkmark in the box.
- 6. Click OK and the "Effects" window closes.
Note: If after a while you decide that you don't like the ClearType feature, it may be uninstalled by repeating the above steps except in step (6) select "Standard" instead of "ClearType."
I use the ClearType feature on my 17-inch non-LCD monitor and do see a definite improvement, as the characters are a little bolder and sharper in appearance. For the multi-user computers, the ClearType feature may be installed or not installed individually for each user. It is my understanding, at this time, Microsoft does not plan to add the ClearType feature to the earlier versions of Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, or 2000.
There are two other ways to enable the ClearType feature:
Go to your Control Panel, click on Display, and follow the steps listed above starting at step (3).
Or
Go to Microsoft's Web site,
, and follow the instructions.
