[kccqzy]

I totally agree.

In Leopard that font smoothing preference wasn't a checkbox, but a drop-down menu specifying how much font smoothing. If you select "Strong" you get a result that looks even bolder than normal. Even when a website is using an extraordinarily thin font, this setting makes it readable.

Apple replaced the drop down menu with a checkbox in Snow Leopard, but the underlying functionality wasn't removed until Catalina. Naturally I was very disappointed after my upgrade to Catalina because all text looked too skinny to me.