This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Since switching to Firefox, forums display skinny hard-to-read fonts and there are little question marks where some punctuation should be

  • 7 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

There seems to be fonts used by forums that don't work with Firefox? Where there should be an apostrophe or quotation marks a small question mark in a black circle appears.

There seems to be fonts used by forums that don't work with Firefox? Where there should be an apostrophe or quotation marks a small question mark in a black circle appears.

All Replies (7)

more options

Try to switch the encoding to Western (ISO-8859-1) if it is currently Unicode (UTF-8) showing as while visiting that website.

  • View > Character Encoding > Western (ISO-8859-1)

Also accessible via Firefox > Web Development


Press F10 or tap the Alt key to bring up the "Menu Bar" temporarily.

more options

That didn't seem to help, but I DO appreciate the effort. Here's a page that has the little question marks instead of proper punctuation:

http://www.ufaa.com/phorum/read.php?1,22982

more options

Which encoding is selected if you visit that page?

more options

I see a situation here: I select that 1st Western coding and it's fine, then when I move to another post or thread, it reverts back to Unicode. Is there a setting to permanently change it?

more options

What is the setting of the default encoding?

Firefox uses that if the server doesn't send an encoding or Firefox can't determine what to use.

  • Tools > Options > Content : Fonts & Colors > Advanced > Default Character Encoding
more options

Default (thanks for the step-by-step) is Western ISO8859-1

more options

That Western setting is the default and should be OK. Strange that the encoding is switching to Unicode for no apparent reason.