LCD sub-pixel text has become a must-have for many Windows desktop users, who have become accustomed to its superior legibility and less blocky appearance at smaller point sizes over hinted black and white text, and being sharper than grey scale anti-aliased text at the same size.

Java SE has supported LCD subpixel text on AWT heavyweights and also on Swing components using Java 2D for many years. However up until now, JavaFX has supported only more Mac OS X-like grey scale smoothed text.

For the JavaFX 2.1 release we’ve added the ability to use Windows-style LCD sub-pixel rendering. All the JavaFX UI controls will be LCD-text enabled by default on Windows, as will “WebView”, the Webkit-based node for rendering Web content.

Applications can also opt-in to use LCD text on the low-level scenegraph “Text” node by a new API : Text.setFontSmoothingType(FontSmoothingType.LCD));