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Reinstalled Firefox, and now gmail/google calendar has different font. How to fix?

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Hi everyone. Weird issue.

So I reinstalled Firefox, and went about my business.. .and found that the font in gmail/google calendar is... well.. not smooth anymore.

At first I was just seeing things... and now its blatantly obvious the font has been changed somehow.

I've tried refreshing, safe mode, new profile, reinstalling, no add-ons, turning certain add-ons off, etc. Nothing seems to be working.

In comparison, the font in Opera and Chrome are exactly the same, and the font in Firefox is slightly off. and now I'm noticing this in almost all websites - it just seems the font in gmail/google calendar is obviously not smooth. What did i do, and how do i fix this? :(

Hi everyone. Weird issue. So I reinstalled Firefox, and went about my business.. .and found that the font in gmail/google calendar is... well.. not smooth anymore. At first I was just seeing things... and now its blatantly obvious the font has been changed somehow. I've tried refreshing, safe mode, new profile, reinstalling, no add-ons, turning certain add-ons off, etc. Nothing seems to be working. In comparison, the font in Opera and Chrome are exactly the same, and the font in Firefox is slightly off. and now I'm noticing this in almost all websites - it just seems the font in gmail/google calendar is obviously not smooth. What did i do, and how do i fix this? :(

Chosen solution

figured it out.

based on that github link, I thought maybe the issue was that firefox was just not rendering the fonts installed at windows/fonts correctly. I loaded up roboto in Word, and yep... something was up.

I downloaded all the roboto fonts here: https://github.com/FontFaceKit/roboto/tree/gh-pages/fonts

deleted the old ones from windows/fonts, and then installed every one of the .ttf versions of roboto. Roboto now looks fantastic in firefox! :)

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All Replies (12)

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Hi everyone.

Fonts are definitely fine in Opera and Chrome. In Firefox they are... craggy? pointed? In all Google websites (gmail, google calendar, youtube) the font is way messed up. I've also now noticed the same on espn. I definitely did something to the fonts.

Again: re-installing, creating a new profile, refreshing I've tried, nothing works. When I go to options, fonts and then uncheck 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above', the font i select definitely works and looks great. When I re-check that option, everything goes back to fudge.

If I was ok with using Chrome, I'd have no problem but... I just don't have the heart to do it :) Really want to fix firefox.

Modified by MichaelinNJ77

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You can right-click and select "Inspect Element" to open the builtin Inspector with this element selected.

You can check in the Rules tab in the right panel in the Inspector what font-family is used for selected text.

You can check in the Font tab in the right panel in the Inspector what font is actually used because Firefox might be using a different font than specified by the website.

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Hi cor-el.

The Font tab shows that the 'screwed up' font is 'Roboto', either plain Roboto, Roboto Medium, Roboto Bold, etc. Roboto is definitely the family of font that is 'messed up'. I also see Google fonts, as well as Calibri and Ariel. All those seem to be ok.

In the Rules tab, I'm also seeing that the font that is normal has a span style that names a font, like this: span style= font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"

The Roboto lines do not: span email="N/A" data-hovercard-id="N/A" name="David" class="gD" role="gridcell" tabindex="-1" data-hovercard-owner-id="150">David

Modified by MichaelinNJ77

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PS, in Opera's 'Developer' the font comes up the same: font-family: Roboto,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;

It just seems to render alot smoother. Again, before re-installation of Firefox, it rendered correctly in Firefox.

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I can also zoom in on the font in question, or zoom out, and it isn't 'messed up' anymore. Its almost like at the default zoom view, its craggy. I don't get it.

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You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

Close and restart Firefox after modifying the setting for changes to take effect.

You can check if there is an update for your graphics display driver and check for hardware acceleration related issues.

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Hi cor-el,

disabled hardware acceleration. closed firefox. reopened firefox, no change.

I have the latest graphics driver for my nvidia from Dell, though there is an update for my specific video card. not sure if hardware is an issue as text is fine in opera and chrome.

confused :(

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as a test, I copied the mozilla and appdata/mozilla folders from a computer that shows fonts in firefox perfectly, and put it on my computer. Still the same issue.

I also looked at the Roboto font in my windows/font folder. At the smaller levels, the Roboto font does display the same 'craggy' messed up way.

The thing that is confusing is that... opera and chrome display the roboto font perfectly.

there's just something in firefox that is not rendering that particular font correctly.

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another thing.

I checked out roboto fonts here: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto

on that page, take a look at the words 'styles' and 'usage'. Firefox renders those in the same crappy way. However, if I type in 'styles' in the 'type here to preview text' box, it renders in firefox PERFECTLY.

Ugh... driving me nuts.

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yep, confirmed here as well: https://fonts.google.com/

Roboto and all of the fonts will render perfectly if I enter custom font in the forms. Roboto comes up perfectly in Firefox. But the Roboto font right above it? looks like ass.

Strangely, if I go to the Roboto font that loads like ass in firefox and zoom it out to 40? It seems to be fine. Its just not rendering well at lower font size. Again, renders fine and smoothly in opera and chrome.

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this is actually a very good description of what I'm going through: https://github.com/Dogfalo/materialize/issues/4493

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Chosen Solution

figured it out.

based on that github link, I thought maybe the issue was that firefox was just not rendering the fonts installed at windows/fonts correctly. I loaded up roboto in Word, and yep... something was up.

I downloaded all the roboto fonts here: https://github.com/FontFaceKit/roboto/tree/gh-pages/fonts

deleted the old ones from windows/fonts, and then installed every one of the .ttf versions of roboto. Roboto now looks fantastic in firefox! :)