Firefox is master of the beard line

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This article was originally published in my blog (affectionately referred to as blargh) on . The original blog no longer exists as I've migrated everything to this wiki.

The original URL of this post was at https://tmont.com/blargh/2011/11/firefox-is-master-of-the-beard-line. Hopefully that link redirects back to this page.

I found myself reading this article, about which I shall not speak. But of that which I will speak is what I noticed when I hovered over the title in Firefox:

firefox

The text-decoration: underline went underneath the g (note the shadow)! Is this new? Do all browsers do this? Has this been around forever and I just never noticed it? Why is "PragDave" such a terrible title?

As it turns out, no other browsers do this. Firefox (on Windows, anyway) seems to be unique. Well, Chrome also appears to be doing it, but Chrome doesn't scale the underline so it's hard to tell without doing some pixel inspection, of which I shall not do.

To wit, here are screenshots of the underlined-ness of the browsers I had readily available on my Windows partition:


Firefox (the gold standard)

firefox


Chrome

chrome


IE9

ie


Opera

opera


Frankly, I find this very sexy. It's an interesting attention to detail that probably goes unnoticed as you scan the text on a page, but makes a big difference subliminally. As in, you're aware that it pleases you aesthetically, you just don't know why. Much like your mom.


For you unwashed heathens who aren't typophiles, that loop in the "g" is called a "loop". Since it goes below the baseline, the loop of the "g" is a descender. Learn your anatomy.

Or maybe I'm just making this stuff up.