# Weird font problems



## Hellkat (Jan 10, 2009)

For some odd reason the drop down boxes in the Browse section of FA have the wrong font, it's different than the one they usually are.

Similarly the font used for viewing stories at Yiffstar.com is wrong for me, and titles in a few blogs, on Wikipedia, and on Yiffstar's comment posting section are somehow turning into illegible crap.

It looks like this on Yiffstar:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/HellkatPredator/Clipboard01.png

It happens only on Firefox 3 and does not happen on Google Chrome.


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## ToeClaws (Jan 10, 2009)

Could be your Browser's gotten it's default fonts or Languages (regional coding) messed up.  On Firefox, go to Tools, then Options (Edit and Options/preferences if running something other than Windows), and go to the Content tab.

Make sure the language is set to the appropriate region - English/US or UK or Canada, for example, will set the encoding to some form of Western, which is what will display those pages right.  You can also check to see if your fonts are correct.

If you click on the "Advanced" button, it will bring up all the Font info, including what encoding region you're using.  For Western, Times New Roman is the default "Serif" font, and Ariel should be the Sans Serif.  Courier New should be the Monospace.  That's in Windows, by the way, for other Operating systems, that might be different.


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## Hellkat (Jan 10, 2009)

That's what everything says. The problem only occurs if I have "Allow pages to chose their own fonts" checked. If I don't everything is fine.


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## ToeClaws (Jan 10, 2009)

Weird.  I have that checked on mine.  Is the encoding (bottom option) set to Western (ISO-8859-1) ?  That would be the typical encoding used to display these pages.

If it is, and you still have the issue, there's a possibility some app has messed with your core fonts, and happened to muck up the ones Firefox uses by default. :/


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## Hellkat (Jan 10, 2009)

Yes, it's set to Western.

It's only Firefox 3 that does it. Firefox 2 wasn't doing it and Chrome doesn't do it.


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## Hellkat (Jan 10, 2009)

Ok, for some reason it's spontaneously fixed itself.


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## ToeClaws (Jan 10, 2009)

*laughs* Yay for computers.  See... this is why Network Admins have jobs - if they worked right, we'd all be out of work.


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## Hellkat (Jan 12, 2009)

It's stopped doing it on FA, but it's still giving me odd letters on Yiffstar and on the aforementioned blogs.


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## ToeClaws (Jan 13, 2009)

Hmm... I wonder it the Language/Regional settings of the OS are having any influence?  In Windows XP, there's an icon in the Control Panel for it.  If you open that, it should be set to one of the available English settings.  Then, in the Language tab, if you click on the "details" button, it will bring up another window - click on the "Advanced tape of that window, and put a checkmark on "Turn off advanced text services" if there isn't already one.

Only other thing I can think of is what I mentioned before - one of the core fonts possibly being messed up.  You can try changing the Serif and Sans Serif fonts of Firefox to something visually similar and see if that works as well.


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## Hellkat (Jan 13, 2009)

Language is in english, putting the checkbox in does nothing.

Font is not being applied by the browser itself, if I force the browser to use a set of particular fonts, the problem clears up, but that doesn't fix the problem so much as sweeping it under the rug.


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## ToeClaws (Jan 13, 2009)

Well, the language settings of the OS would only work if the browser was using the OS settings as the default for the region.  I'm really not sure what else to suggest other than it seems like a corrupted core font.  A way to test/fix that, if that's what it is, would be to get a replacement Ariel and Times New Roman font (you can just copy them from another Windows box).  I'm out of ideas for it after that.


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## Raithah (Jan 13, 2009)

Mind if I cut in? There's just a little diagnostic test I'd like ya to run .

Try booting Firefox into [Safe Mode], then try your websites again. You'll probably want to click all of the checkboxes; the intent being to isolate the problem away (grmr?) from any extensions or customizations. If that still doesn't work, you could try 'installing' [Firefox Portable] so as to check whether or not your problem is universal to all firefox installs, or just the one. Good luck .


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