Why would html text sometimes appear garbled when viewing on Chrome or Safari on Windows?

Question

Occasionally users report that the text on https://squareup.com looks like gibberish (or garbled) to them… however we’ve been unable to reproduce this.

Users report

Answer 1

It seems to me that the texts in question have text-shadow applied to them. This is pretty bleeding-edge, experimental, demanding, unreliable stuff, for little if any visual value (eg white shadows on a white background).