So, if you're cool, you use Firefox as your default browser, right?

When Firefox went to version 2.0, there were plenty o' problems, problems that now seem to be resolved (I had a problem with all my favorites disappearing, which may or may not have been their fault ... but, it happened at the exact same time, so draw your own conclusions).

Microsoft came out with a new version of their Internet Explorer, which mimicked a lot of Firefox's functionality (multiple tabs, anyone?).

That's cool.

It's necessary for me to have IE, because my pages render different on each (the fault of Microsoft not following WWW protocols, I assume).

So, I downloaded IE 7.0, and all of a sudden, not only did my IE pages look totally different, so did my Outlook pages.

Here's why:

You may have noticed that after installing IE 7, your fonts in IE and Outlook Express look different. That is because IE7 has changed our text rendering to use ClearType. I hope you like the change. If you are not familiar with ClearType, you can find more information on it using the link below, but basically it is another method for rendering Text on LCD Monitors.

Basically, it makes your type look blurry, unless you're using an LCD Monitor.

So, how do you turn it off?

Check out the link. It's a setting in your Internet Options. Go to the Control Panel, select Internet Options, go to Advanced, find Multimedia, then un-check "Use ClearType for all monitors" or something like that.

Problem solved.