Suddenly heavy font smoothing anti-aliasing, backspace misbehaving, etc

[Harmonica]

The beta client updated and now Steam fonts are incredibly heavily smoothed (ie, on this page, on the Store pages), to the point of being headache inducing. Additionally, there's some odd behaviour going on where backspace and navigating through typed text with the arrow keys is erasing/jumping two characters at a time, never seen anything like this. Some dpi issue or something?

edit: backspace/double paste issue has now disappeared after a restart, smoothing remains.

Please revert this font change or give us an option to disable it.

Here's what it looksle: like:

http://imgur.com/QI1T9bY

Not having any issues with any other apps or windows, just steam browser content.

[Harmonica]

Here's a picture to illustrate the problem. Top half is Steam in IE, bottom half is store inside Steam. Now IE applies some pretty heavy handed smoothing of its own but it's completely fine in comparison to what has suddenly started happening in Steam client.

http://imgur.com/4s9LGM8

Community Activity on the right and 'Recently Updated' box show the difference most clearly.

Finally, here is how it looks in Firefox, and how it should look (how it looked inside Steam until this recent update today):
http://i.imgur.com/6dToJZG.png

Just writing this post is giving me a headache, honestly.

[Harmonica]

This is still an issue. Surely I can't be the only one that suddenly noticed these hideously blurry fonts? I guess it's a Chromium thing. I don't use Chrome. If I install Chrome do I get to un-blur my fonts, or am I eternally cursed to avoiding browsing anything in-client?

Heavily smoothed fonts does not mean better usability! Just like using white text on black, and all the other cons over the years.

edit: again here is the comparison between Steam client (left) and Firefox (right) using calibrated Windows 7 ClearType. Firefox isn't perfect but it's like having laser eye surgery compared to Steam. What's going on Valve? Did someone go nuts and add soft CSS tags to every single UI element?

http://i.imgur.com/PVOwnkC.png

[Black Blade]

Try to go into Steam → Sittings → interface → and mark Enable DirectWrite for improved font....

Try to see if disabling or enabling that helps?

[Harmonica]

I think that only affects things in the Steam interface itself, not the browser parts? I've always had it disabled because I prefer the Clear Type style text that I get. If I turn it on, it just makes the fonts very bold looking.

[Black Blade]

Originally posted by Harmonica:

I think that only affects things in the Steam interface itself, not the browser parts? I've always had it disabled because I prefer the Clear Type style text that I get. If I turn it on, it just makes the fonts very bold looking.

as much as i know it also effect the browser type, but i was just thinking you can try and see

[Chika Ogiue]

Those font settings don't affect the text in the browser. It does make the text in the client easier to read, but the text in the store? Completely unreadable regardless.