Take the 2-minute tour ×

So, I'm developing a website that uses a custom font via the Google webfonts system. In Firefox and Chrome all the fonts look fine. But in Opera 11.62 running on Ubuntu 11.10, 15px Lato looks really weird: http://i.imgur.com/x2GgQ.png . The font appears to vary in weight part way through letters. I think that its just applying hinting way too much. Google webfonts is sending the file in .woff format, if that affects anything.

How can I either fix this or prevent Opera from applying the custom font?

share|improve this question
add comment

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Yes, your screenshot definitely indicates that the font's hinting is not perfect. You could try running Lato through the Font Squirrel Generator and see if you get better results. Autohinting routines are a bit hit or miss, though ours is getting better.

share|improve this answer
That worked, thanks. –  Jcubed Apr 6 '12 at 19:55
add comment

Some thoughts:

  1. Have you tried loading other .woff fonts? Do they look weird as well?
  2. Try setting the font-weight in CSS to something and seeing if that fixes it.
  3. Does it display weird on the Google Font Directory page?

Sadly, my Ubuntu 11.10 system went out of commission today, so I'm unable to test.

share|improve this answer
1. The ones I tried didn't. 2. It looks odd at all the font weights I tried, although its less noticeable over 700. 3. Yes. –  Jcubed Apr 6 '12 at 3:30
If it displays oddly on the Google page, it might not be easily fixable. Sorry I can't be of more help. –  Evan Hahn Apr 6 '12 at 3:36
add comment

Your Answer


