Windows XP has shipped and the best part of XP is the inclusion of ClearType. Even on a regular monitor (it's targeted towards LCD screens), I love reading the antialiased type from ClearType. I turned it off yesterday to take a screenshot and I could swear I was using a new font called Jaggie.

Joel Spolsky wrote up antialiased text as one of three wrong ideas from Computer Science. Jakob Nielsen has mentioned some ClearType developments in the spotlighted links section of Useit.Com. After Microsoft unveiled ClearType, Steve Gibson posted some of his own research of antialiasing on his site. MIT Technology Review reviewed the patent Microsoft received for ClearType (technical overview of ClearType Filtering at Microsoft Research).

Microsoft first added anti-aliasing of system fonts with a Windows 95 Plus! Pack utility. Some additional notes from Microsoft Typography about the history of anti-alising in Windows. Apple included a smoothing fonts option with Mac OS 8.5 in 1998.

Hat tip to Scoblelizer for reminding me of this.
8:26:54 AM