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How can I fix this font problem?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

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As you can see in the image below, something weird is making the font look completely weird - like some of the letters or their stems are bold, whilst others are extremely light. It's making websites like Youtube unreadable. Can't find any fixes anywhere.

Advanced settings are: Fonts for: Latin Proportional: Serif Size: 16 Serif: Times New Roman Sans-serif: Arial Monospace: Courier New Size: 13 Minimum font size: None "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" is checked.

As you can see in the image below, something weird is making the font look completely weird - like some of the letters or their stems are bold, whilst others are extremely light. It's making websites like Youtube unreadable. Can't find any fixes anywhere. Advanced settings are: Fonts for: Latin Proportional: Serif Size: 16 Serif: Times New Roman Sans-serif: Arial Monospace: Courier New Size: 13 Minimum font size: None "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" is checked.
Attached screenshots

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Type about:preferences#general<enter> in the address bar. Across from fonts and colors, press the Advanced button. On the bottom, turn on Allow Web Sites To Choose Their Own.

Fonts Information - Detected via Flash http://browserspy.dk/fonts-flash.php?detail=1


Also see: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/search/advanced?q=fonts&language=en-US&product=firefox&sortby_documents=relevance&a=1&w=1

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Also:

Make sure you haven't enabled a High Contrast theme in the OS settings.

Make sure you allow pages to choose their own colors.

  • Options/Preferences -> General: Fonts & Colors -> Colors: "Override the colors specified by the page with my selections above"

Try "Never" if the default "Only with High Contrast themes" isn't working.


Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration or userChrome.css is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Themes
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window
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Thanks for not even reading my post, Fred. And no, neither of these have helped - Fred because he didn't even bother to read my thread to know I'd already done what he'd suggested, and cor-el because it'd be nice to have things explained in plain english. You haven't even said how I get to "OS settings".

Just got this laptop new, and this is how firefox turns out, so I haven't "chosen" anything. This is how either my laptop or firefox has chosen things to be. I want to fix that.

I've used firefox for years and never had this. I've also had little reason to tinker with firefox. So please put things simply.

Sorry for my frustration, but this is really frustrating - especially when I'm told to do something I've already stated has been done, and then being told to do something that I'm not even given the first hint of how to do. And especially when I've never had this problem for nearly a decade with firefox until I get a new laptop - one that's identical to my old one which didn't have this problem.

I want to stay with firefox, but I'm quickly seeing why people are moving to Chrome. Please show me that I don't have to.

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If you check this setting in Options then it should work regardless of the current OS setting.

  • Options/Preferences -> General: Fonts & Colors -> Colors: "Override the colors specified by the page with my selections above"

Try "Never" if the default "Only with High Contrast themes" isn't working.

Did you check for issues with hardware acceleration in Firefox ?