Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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

Font line spacing issue

  • 3 replies
  • 18 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by checkerap

more options

Firefox on my Mac is displaying font line spacing very strange. All the other browsers I've tried are not having this problem right now.

The spacing between lines in text, even single lines if off a bit and it's making things look not vertically centered as well as body text lines are too close together. This affects every font, not just one. It's almost as if there's no padding on top of the text.

It's even messing up Google sites. E.g. Gmail labels aren't centered vertically with the text in them. In Google Reader the top of the second line in collapsed list view is visible when it shouldn't be.

What is going on? I tried reinstalling FF but its the same. I've rebooted, nothing. This all started after my Mac shut down from power failure.

Firefox on my Mac is displaying font line spacing very strange. All the other browsers I've tried are not having this problem right now. The spacing between lines in text, even single lines if off a bit and it's making things look not vertically centered as well as body text lines are too close together. This affects every font, not just one. It's almost as if there's no padding on top of the text. It's even messing up Google sites. E.g. Gmail labels aren't centered vertically with the text in them. In Google Reader the top of the second line in collapsed list view is visible when it shouldn't be. What is going on? I tried reinstalling FF but its the same. I've rebooted, nothing. This all started after my Mac shut down from power failure.

Modified by rkhannaatl

All Replies (3)

more options

You can do a check for corrupted fonts and other font issues:

See also:

more options

No, it's not a corrupted font or other font issue, at least for my issue with Firefox's line spacing, which now that I think about it is probably not related at all to the original posters issue.


Anyways, the reason I know my issue isn't due to my font book or something else to do with my mac is because, first I tested on a different mac and then I tested with Adobe's Browser Lab and the problem exists in all version of Firefox for OSX only.

Use a font size of 130px and you start to see that Firefox bumps the baseline of the text up about 9-12 pixels compared with all of the other browsers (including FF on Win)


I spent the day trying to figure why my text formatting was frak'd up and it's not my font book, although that was a good initial guess.

ScreenShots: Firefox on OSX (notice it looks perfect) All Other Browsers (baseline is shifted down by 9 pixels)

  • I develop on Firefox because it's awesome... however, I'm pretty sure all other browsers can't be wrong on this:-)

Modified by hlight

more options

I'm having the same problem in Firefox and Aurora builds. Line-heights get messed up, looks ok in the other browsers.

Text looks like it got shifted up.

https://skitch.com/checkerap/fm4wj/homepage-jagt.riskline.com

Modified by checkerap