This is a duplication of this question, which was asked 10 years ago. Seeing no solution has been mentioned there, and no solution can be found on the internet in general, I decided to post this question again.
As described in that old question, the equations rendered by MathJax on Windows always look not so good - a little bit too thin, unclear and blurry. I am getting the same result when I use Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome / Cent Browser and Firefox. So, as explained there, the rendering problem must be due to the OS I use, namely Windows.
I have also tried applying MacType to Cent Browser, which makes the fonts on Windows rendered in different ways and look better. (Here I must use Cent Browser instead of Google Chrome, because Chrome uses DirectWrite, with which MacType doesn't work and which can not be disabled, while Cent Browser allows us to do that. See this issue. I encountered another problem after disabling DirectWrite though - The equations rendered by MathJax look obviously bigger than normal size without DirectWrite on. But it's not the topic here.) However, MacType doesn't seem to have any influence on the rendering.
So is there any solution to this problem, as in 2022? Personally I think it's important since the poor quality of rendered equations has affected my browsing experience a lot.
Thanks!
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I'm interested in implementation details of Firefox's rendering engine on Windows, in particular (however would be interesting to know how it differs from Linux, too). I couldn't find any source code online in a brisk search, it seems there is no other way but to download it all locally. And, sadly, I don't even have that much time to dive into it and figure this out, so I'm asking here maybe someone can make a brief explanation?
I tested Firefox window with WinSpy, and its obvious that it's not using GDI or any other native Windows API, as it has no child windows, only single monolithic one. Is it using DirectX\OpenGL and renders text and everything on 2 polygons glued into rectangle?
I faced situation of global site redesign (not appearance, but code architecture and underlying technologies). Website has about 135 000 visitors everyday. And it's crucial to make right decision now.
I had no experience of using LESS and CSS3PIE on such big projects before. Maybe some of you can predict some trouble which I can run into using technologies mentioned above. I would like to know advantages and drawbacks.
Isn't it better to use old tested and reliable methods like sprites for round corner buttons with shadows and gradients? I look at http://zappos.com. They just degrade gracefully in IE and don't use CSS3PIE.
Nobody answered me, so I try to answer myself. Since there are server-side LESS-compilers for all major platforms (Ruby, .NET, PHP) I decided to use LESS but compile server-side instead of using LESS.js which is not good because it prevents client's browser from caching CSS.
As concerning CSS3PIE I don't see any significant drawbacks of using it, a little more load lies on client using IE but it's not so bad.
The only issue I can foresee now is background and decoration disappearing on popups. I have already encountered this problem and posted a question here but no one ever answered.
I would avoid using CSS3Pie for production sites. In my experience, the higher the number of CSS3Pie-rendered elements on the page, the worse IE8/9 will perform.
Specifically, when I was using IE9 with an IE8 document mode, and with at least 2 elements rendered using CSS3Pie (using border-radius and linear-gradient), I observed a noticeable lag when scrolling the browser window. That is, I would try and scroll down the page, and the scroll bar would take a couple of seconds to "catch up" with the mouse pointer.
As soon as I switched CSS3Pie off, no lag when scrolling was observed. The same applies for IE8 in my experience.
As I have been learning, I have developed a bad habit of only doing things in chrome. More recently I have started looking at stuff I make in other browsers; it sucks. I have noticed that the positioning in firefox is a little different, safari is basically the same, and IE is a hot mess. For now I am just going to focus on getting things to work correctly in firefox. Is there a sort of if Firefox conditional statement?
There is no equivalent to IE Conditional Comments in Mozilla based browsers like Firefox.
Depending on your server-side platform (if any), you could elect to sniff the browser type and conditionally include different style-sheets. Of course, you want to avoid this as much as possible. Usually by fixing things to work consistently across all browsers, you end up with better, more robust, site that will probably save you time in the long run.
Regarding CSS differences, you might consider starting with a reset CSS, such as the one suggested in Joe's answer, to provide a uniform baseline.
Regarding standardization of HTML and other features between the browsers, you might want to check out modernizer.
I find this script will solve a lot of quirks (minus IE of course) reset.css
I have been following the usage of JavaScript for the past few years, and with the release of extremely fast scripting engines (V8, SquirrelFish Extrene, TraceMonkey, etc.) the possibilities of JavaScript have increased dramatically. However, the usage share of Internet Explorer coupled with it's total lack of support for recent standards makes me want to drop a bomb on Microsoft's HQ, as it creates a huge amount of problems for any website.
The game will need to be pretty dynamic client-side, with animations and other eye-candy things, but not a full-blown game like those that run directly in the OS using DirectX or OpenGL. However, this might be a little stretch for JavaScript and will certainly feel extremely slow in Internet Explorer (given that the current IE engine can be hundreds of times slower than SFX; gotta see what IE9 will bring), would it be better to just do the whole thing in Flash? I know this means requiring the plug-in AND I have no experience whatsoever with Flash (other than browsing YouTube :P). It also means I can't just output directly from PHP, I would have to use XML or some other format to pass data to it (JSON is directly integrated in JS and PHP can deal with it easily).
Another idea would be to provide an alternative interface just for IE, though I don't know how (ActiveX maybe? or with Flash, then why not just provide it to all browsers) or totally not supporting it and requiring the use of other browsers, although this is plain stupid from a business perspective.
So here am I, wondering what approach to take and thus asking for your advice. How should I build the client-side? AJAX in all browsers, Flash in all browsers or a mix (AJAX for "modern" browsers and something else for the "grandpa": IE).
I recommend a plug-in platform (Flash, Silverlight, or Java) over AJAX. Having a clean layer of abstraction between your game and the client's browser is a big advantage. In any non-trivial AJAX game look forward to endless corner-cases where browsers differ in performance or implementation.
Personally, I think Flash is easy to learn if you are coming from AJAX experience. Flash is currently the most widely installed and proven plug-in for browser games. However, Silverlight and Java are both building momentum. Also, the Unity engine has become a popular choice for commercial browser games.
I think you shouldn't leave Java out of the equation. It's a powerful, fast language, and with Java applets, you can do almost anything. If you want hardware-accelerated graphics via OpenGL, JOGL can do it, even in an applet.
On the other hand, it might not be right for you. But at this early stage, I think you should evaluate all of your options, and since you have no experience with Flash but sound like you've got a bit of programming experience, you might feel more at-home with Java.
I believe the current answer is Flash game.
Alternatives:
Java Applet: getting less and less common those days and it is not commonly installed as a plugin on many computers.
SilverLight: too new and might vary and change in time. not commonly installed on many computers and it's Microsoft (whom tends to change technology every 2 years ...)
JavaScript / AJAX: Still a new kid on the block, it's on the rise it is true with many nice features, but still lack of good cross browser for IE even IE8, can not play sounds internally, still slower than the others, and you don't know where will it evolves.
Eventually probably the best solution for now is Flash development:
Cross platform. Works fast. Long time already alive and have a lot of support.
I hope this answer will change in the next year. Happy Peasach.
Check out Jmonkey. The "plugin" loads if you have Java on your machine. Once it's cached, the next time the visitor goes to the page, it your game loads very quick. Check out their website for demos and see what I mean: http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/
Oh, I forgot to say, it's a 3D scenegraph Java engine. I just tried it again, and it loaded in linux. Looks they've put in some good work.
Don't do it with javascript in the browser. And Flash really can be a pain just because it's closed source and you don't know if you've made a mistake or found a bug - speaking from experience. I'd never want to make another Flash game again.
How about using RaphaelJs , it is a Javascript library that make dinamyc images using SVG, and for IE, it try to make those images using the IE alternative: VML. Im using it on my own WebGame, but i dont really make complex graphics in it. The most complex thing done on RapahelJs was a heath map (20 * 20 tiles ) with a dinamyc opacity slider. An it work with jquery without any problem or configuration!
Suppose I'm writing a 2d tile based MMORPG.
Furthermore suppose I hate flash.
Lastly, suppose I only need my code to run in the latest safari, latest firefox, and latest chrome.
What are the limits to what I can and can't do? (Are there examples of good game engines that only require a recent web browser)?
Look into HTML5 Canvas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element
The latest versions of the browsers you mention already support it.
Check out the Unity3D engine: http://www.unity3d.com
Cross-browser, cross-platform, although your users would have to download the unity browser plugin...
There's also the Raphaël javascript library...it does a very nice job of abstracting a lot of the heavy lifting you'd have to do otherwise! The memory footprint seems decently light as well (from my small-scale playing around with it anyway).
For something that works for the user, OOBE (without add-ins etc); Javascript is probably the only unified functionality that exists between all browsers.
The browser is surprisingly quite capable (at least Chrome is), this is something that Google Chrome is attempting to promote (see http://www.chromeexperiments.com/). Notice some however, that experiments are often laggy or unworkable in other web browsers.
As for a list of things that are and aren't capable; that would take a fair while to compile.
In regards specifically to a 2D tile based game, I wouldn't say it isn't possible, but it may be quite difficult to create. As mentioned before, most browsers (apart from the stand-out; Google Chrome), suffer from limited resources. Therefore resources wise, it may be difficult to implement and would defiantly require a lot of requirement fore planning.
Java applets are also possible...
You could also move to 3D. While it does require a plug-in (although is being integrated into Chrome), the results are undeniable.
"O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser." http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/. The video is quite amazing actually -- especially the live map editing (e.g. removing sprites).