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When using Google.com in Firefox and Chrome, the keywords I search for appear in a compressed font in the search results. How to fix?

  • 6 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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When searching google, the keywords I search for and sometimes other words appear in a compressed font. Sometimes, when browsing I see this issue on other websites seemingly randomly. I've had this issue in both Firefox and Chrome, making me think maybe it is an issue with my computer's font, but the compressed text appears next to completely normal looking text. This issue has been here since I bought this used Mac Book Pro. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox and Chrome and have tried disabling any plug-ins and extensions to no effect. It is a bearable problem but irksome and I'd like to fix it if I could. Please see the attached screenshot where I've circled in pink some of the areas.

When searching google, the keywords I search for and sometimes other words appear in a compressed font. Sometimes, when browsing I see this issue on other websites seemingly randomly. I've had this issue in both Firefox and Chrome, making me think maybe it is an issue with my computer's font, but the compressed text appears next to completely normal looking text. This issue has been here since I bought this used Mac Book Pro. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox and Chrome and have tried disabling any plug-ins and extensions to no effect. It is a bearable problem but irksome and I'd like to fix it if I could. Please see the attached screenshot where I've circled in pink some of the areas.

All Replies (6)

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Sometimes screenshots do not upload with the initial question. You can attach the image to a reply at:

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1116630#question-reply

Please cut out or blur any sensitive information in the image before posting.

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Screenshot did not upload with question. Uploading now. Thanks jscher2000. Notice also the "Sign In" button to the right is also compressed.

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That is so odd. Everywhere that Google has applied bold, the font has become extremely narrow.

Could you right-click (Ctrl+click) one of those bold areas to call up the context menu and choose Inspect Element (Q)? This should open the inspector in the lower part of the tab. You then can change the panel on the right from Rules to Fonts to see whether that is Arial bold or something else -- Mac might be different than Windows. Sample screen shot attached.

Since this affects other browsers, there may be some kind of font repair needed at the system level once you track down which font it is.

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The font is Antenna psst, but is displaying as arial. Earlier today I downloaded and installed a .ttf file of Antenna psst (which fittingly is a compressed sans serif). My font book flagged 2 minor problems and I installed anyway. This did not seem to affect the issue at all, and weirdly enough the font in question still displays as arial according to the inspector. Screenshot attached

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I think what your Firefox is saying is it is using Antenna psst. in place of Arial. I have no idea why that would be. Perhaps your Arial bold font is missing or corrupted and... still not obvious why Antenna would be used instead.

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If you have a bold variant of Antenna psst, but not for Arial then Firefox may decide to use that font for bold search term text, especially if you have set this font as the default font.