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Is there any CSS property to make font smooth in IE?

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Short answer for : there is no cross‑browser CSS switch that will reliably “turn on” smoother text inside Internet Explorer. Rather than a single property, real improvement comes from choosing and serving fonts so the browser and OS can render them well, plus a few browser‑specific hints where supported.

Practical steps designers can use now:

  • Prefer a modern system font stack so users get a native, well‑hinted face by default. Example:
body { font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; }

  • Serve well‑hinted webfonts in WOFF/WOFF2, subset them and use font-display so the browser picks up a usable face quickly. See Using @font-face and font-display for options. Consider running problematic fonts through a generator such as the Font Squirrel Webfont Generator to preserve hinting.

  • Add optional rendering hints for browsers that respect them (these do not affect IE on Windows but help WebKit/Firefox on macOS):

text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;

Troubleshooting checklist (useful when users report jagged text): verify OS ClearType/tuning, confirm the page is at 100% zoom (subpixel AA is often disabled when zoomed or when text is put into a GPU layer), avoid forcing text into bitmap layers with transforms, and check that fonts aren’t being synthetically bolder/italicized by CSS.

This builds on points from earlier replies in the thread: you can’t reliably override the OS/browser renderer with a single IE CSS property, but you can significantly improve perceived smoothness by improving the fonts you serve and using progressive, browser‑friendly fallbacks.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for zortec

That is handled by the operating system and browser. There is a font-smooth property in CSS3 but it is not finished yet.

Member Avatar for laura_ci

The smooth font property/ anti-aliasing is set on each individual computer, and usually set as default in IE, unlike Firefox.

Have a quick search in Google referencing your operating system and you should find a few articles on how to set this.

Member Avatar for jbennet

and usually set as default in IE, unlike Firefox.

No its not. Cleartype was not enabled by default for IE on XP or Windows Server (any version). Only vista/7.

Member Avatar for ladyqueen1988

Font smoothing is your web browser property not css issues. Right now it's entirely controlled by the client's machine via the operating system settings. Windows 2K and newer have this option. Mac OSX does too. The Omniweb browser for Mac OS 9 and X has font smoothing built into the browser.

Member Avatar for candaceusa

Yeas of course this is just a browser ability for smoothing fonts effects. Many browsers use addons or plugins for smoothing effects.

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