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Firefox will not display basic content on certain (common) sites

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Hi there:

On certain websites (common) ones Firefox will not display options on the website. These sites include Yahoo Mail, Twitter, Weebly.

An example would be if there is a menu of choices such as delete, ad, tweet, etc. instead of displaying correctly it looks like a box with 4 dots.

The other browsers are fine. I have the latest Firefox and this started with the previous version as well. I uninstalled/reinstalled without change.

Windows 7 Computer/Norton Anti Virus.

If allowed I can upload a screen shot.

Thank you.

Hi there: On certain websites (common) ones Firefox will not display options on the website. These sites include Yahoo Mail, Twitter, Weebly. An example would be if there is a menu of choices such as delete, ad, tweet, etc. instead of displaying correctly it looks like a box with 4 dots. The other browsers are fine. I have the latest Firefox and this started with the previous version as well. I uninstalled/reinstalled without change. Windows 7 Computer/Norton Anti Virus. If allowed I can upload a screen shot. Thank you.

Chosen solution

You're welcome.

We have seen this issue reported before quite a few times when people disable fonts as specified by web pages.
This is the consequence of websites using a font to display special icons instead of images for each of them like happened in the past.

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All Replies (10)

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Screen Shot uploaded.

Thank you.

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Hello craigtheairplaneman, Can you check working with Firefox in SAFE MODE,this may help you. Thanks, Dyvik

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Hi Dyvik:

Had tried safe mode and had same result.

Thank you for the reply.

Any suggestions and fix would be appreciated, CF

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That is a problem with a downloadable font that is used to display those icons.

Make sure that you allow pages to choose their own fonts.

  • Tools > Options > Content : Fonts & Colors > Advanced: [X] "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"

You can check the gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled pref on the about:config page and reset this pref if it shows as user set (bold) via the right-click context menu to the default value.

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Hi Cor-El:

Thank you.

I will try the suggestion when I am back on the computer.

What made the issue come out of nowhere?

Is the about config page within Tools/Options as well?

Thank you so much, CF

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You can see that this is a font issue because Firefox displays a little box with the hex code instead of the character that is supposed to show. If you would have a font installed that covers this Unicode range the you would see that instead. To make Firefox use the font as specified in the page CSS code you need to make sure to allow pages to choose their fonts.

See this page for an example of such a custom font (octicon):

You can use the NoSquint extension to set font size (text/page zoom) and text color on web pages in case you need to make such adjustments.

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Hi Cor-El:

I tried your solution and it worked in 1 minute!

You are a genius and the only person on forums that gave something that worked!

Why do you think the issue started out of nowhere and do Yahoo/Twitter/Weebly use things in their programming that most do not?

Once again your response and articulation is appreciated, especially making me understand instructions.

Thanks so much, CF

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Seçilmiş Həll

You're welcome.

We have seen this issue reported before quite a few times when people disable fonts as specified by web pages.
This is the consequence of websites using a font to display special icons instead of images for each of them like happened in the past.

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But I really don't want to allow all sites to use their own fonts, just, in this case, Twitter.

Isn't this an accessibility issue? Can't there be a setting that allows just this site to use its own stupid fonts?

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> But I really don't want to allow all sites to use > their own fonts, just, in this case, Twitter.

Exactly. It's not a very good solution to be forced to give up control/accessibility on every Web site, to fix a problem with just a few popular ones like Twitter.

It seems like a pathetic accessibility fail on the part of Yahoo, Twitter, etc., but since the practice is likely to persist and spread, please, Firefox:

=> allow site-specific configuration of "allow pages to choose their fonts."

-- Tim McCormick, Palo Alto