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text does not display in address bar or any windows I open

  • 5 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by jackanada

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Text does not display when typing in address bar. When I open a window (eg Edit > Preferences) no text is displayed within that either.

Problem has persisted through Ubuntu 12.04 (possibly 11.10) to 13.04. Has also remained after re-installs, both through use of Software Centre, and through Terminal commands, and after running purge of all firefox content. Running Firefox as root using gksu command also doesnt help.

Text does not display when typing in address bar. When I open a window (eg Edit > Preferences) no text is displayed within that either. Problem has persisted through Ubuntu 12.04 (possibly 11.10) to 13.04. Has also remained after re-installs, both through use of Software Centre, and through Terminal commands, and after running purge of all firefox content. Running Firefox as root using gksu command also doesnt help.

All Replies (5)

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hello, please try to load firefox in safemode once, then go to preferences > advanced general & disable hardware acceleration and see if this can address the issue...

Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems

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Apologies, already tried that and forgot to mention, still get no text so cannot do anything from there. Pretty sure it has never been enabled though. Example of what I see included...

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Ok, ran in safe mode through terminal

(firefox:4827): Gtk-WARNING **: Default font does not have a positive size

How can I change the default font without using the GUI (because I cannot read anything in the windows)

Or maybe what is the default font so I can check on that?

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You can do a font test to see if you can identify corrupted font(s).

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Have finally solved, 1st checked default system fonts available using unity-tweak Then went to ~.mozilla/firefox and found prefs.js file, deleted everything to do with fonts and families, saved and restarted.

The odd thing is how this file persisted despite removing and purging firefox.