Text smearing

[Jormungandr]

Back in the day of the browser wars, there were times when I went to site and while it was loading I might scroll down it. When I did, the text would sometimes "smear" together as if it were semi-wet paint and some took a brush to it. Sometimes, it would recover but other times it would remain "smeared." I haven't encountered this problem in a long time, but I always wondered what caused it. Anyone?

[Stealth Potato]

It's impossible to say precisely without knowing all the details, but I would guess that it was probably just sloppy rendering code: when displaying a page while it was still loading, for some reason it failed to properly clear the background before re-drawing scrolled text.

[Derleth]

Anti-aliasing can create a 'smeared' effect by turning sharp borders between the text and background into a more complex shaded image. That wouldn't have anything to do with scrolling, though.

[GusNSpot]

I can sometimes get a strange effect if a slow computer page is loading and I scroll or slide down before it is loaded. Happens a lot on dial-up.

Happens most in IE or AOHell....