Blurry text after using CSS transform: scale(); in Chrome

Question

Seems like there has been a recent update to Google Chrome that causes blurry text after doing a transform: scale(). Specifically I'm doing this:

@-webkit-keyframes bounceIn {
  0% {
    opacity: 0;
    -webkit-transform: scale(.3);
  }

  50% {
    opacity: 1;
    -webkit-transform: scale(1.05);
  }

  70% {
    -webkit-transform: scale(.9);
  }

  100% {
    -webkit-transform: scale(1);
  }
}

If you visit http://rourkery.com in Chrome, you should see the problem on the main text area. It didn't used to do this and it doesn't seem to effect other webkit browsers (like Safari). There were some other posts about people experiencing a similar issue with 3d transforms, but can't find anything about 2d transforms like this.

Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

I have have this problem a number of times and there seems to be 2 ways of fixing it (shown below). You can use either of these properties to fix the rendering, or both at the same time.

Backface visibility hidden fixes the problem as it simplifies the animation to just the front of the object, whereas the default state is the front and the back.

backface-visibility: hidden;

TranslateZ also works as it is a hack to add hardware acceleration to the animation.

transform: translateZ(0);

Both of these properties fix the problem that you are having but some people also like to add

-webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased;

to their animated to object. I find that it can change the rendering of a web font but feel free to experiment with that method too.