Detect Windows XP for Font Rendering

Question

I've been playing with Typekit for a year now and I've only just noticed how bad fonts look in Windows XP, even when using Chrome. Fonts look ok (not great) on Vista onwards.

Is there a way to detect whether a user is on Windows XP?

I've read a few articles about the different rendering engines on Windows e.g. http://blog.typekit.com/2010/10/21/type-rendering-web-browsers/ http://blog.typekit.com/2010/10/15/type-rendering-operating-systems/#gdi-standard

The reality is that sites still look horrendous with XP and Typekit, even when I have enabled 'cleartype' via display properties.

In conclusion I simply would like to turn off Typekit fonts for XP users, they are un-readable. Normally I would go down the road of feature detection via Modernizr, but I can't detect the font rendering engine so I'm looking for other resorts. Is it possible to detect the operating system?

Answer 1

I've managed to find this font smoothing detection technique.

http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2009/11/29/how-to-detect-font-smoothing-using-javascript/

However, typically I've only found font smoothing to be a problem with XP users and various Typekit fonts, so would only advise using if you have a high number of XP users visiting your site (or a website stakeholder - in this case my manager!).