Visual Studio 2010 blurry font

Question

I'm using Visual C# 2010 Express (final, not beta or anything) and I'm having an issue with blurry fonts while debugging. The font appears normal everywhere (intellisense, menus, code) but when a breakpoint is reached most of the debugger related text is blurry (Locals, Call Stack, "data tooltips").

Here are screenshots of the normal text and the blurry text while debugging: http://img682.imageshack.us/i/normalh.png/

http://img145.imageshack.us/i/blurry.png/

Is this a known bug or something related to my system? Is there a way to fix it?

Answer 1

The blurry text is a different font, and it's being rendered using ClearType. Some ClearType rendering, on some displays, with some fonts, at some point sizes looks unpleasantly blurry--that's what you've got.

You can change the font (in the Options menu) to a different face, or a larger size. It will also improve if you use a higher-resolution display.

Answer 2

You might have to change the setting of "Fonts and Colors"

1. Tools -> Options -> Fonts and Colors
2. pick the item of "[Watch, Locals, and Autos Tool Windows]" from "Show setting for"
3. Change the Font and Size to the setting as same as the setting of "Text Editor"

Answer 3

Actually, this appears to be not ClearType but WPF font smoothing. The difference is significant. ClearType doesn't do blurry, at least not on a standard LCD screen, it uses subpixels to anti-alias the fonts. When ClearType is disabled at the system level, WPF still renders using greyscale anti-aliasing. Try enabling ClearType.