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Is there a change in the way Firefox 4 displays fonts from CSS?

  • 3 replies
  • 121 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by wickedisco

wickedisco
wickedisco
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This site is coded using standard CSS and had Arial Narrow as first font choice for certain elements. In Firefox 4 / Windows 7 those instances are now defaulting to secondary font - Arial or to the default font Times Roman. EVERY other browser including past Firefox have displayed Arial Narrow properly - assuming the user has it in their system fonts - which is the vast majority of visitors. NEED a fix for this!

This site is coded using standard CSS and had Arial Narrow as first font choice for certain elements. In Firefox 4 / Windows 7 those instances are now defaulting to secondary font - Arial or to the default font Times Roman. EVERY other browser including past Firefox have displayed Arial Narrow properly - assuming the user has it in their system fonts - which is the vast majority of visitors. NEED a fix for this!

All Replies (3)

littlecreature
littlecreature
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This worked for me:

font-family: Arial; font-stretch: condensed;

wickedisco
wickedisco Question owner
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I tried this and discovered that it did not work in IE8 and Chrome - therefore I was just shifting the issue to other browsers as on those browsers the fonts were then not displaying as Narrow/Condensed.

Any further suggestions?

Modified by wickedisco

wickedisco
wickedisco Question owner
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To those that are having the same issue - I took LittleCreature's advice above and combined it with the sentiment from a similar post regarding Arial Black in the forum http://support.mozilla.com/bs/questions/795314.

{ font-family: Arial Narrow, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: condensed }

Works (at least for now - future browser versions, time will tell) by taking advantage of the combined 'shortcomings' of all browsers:


  • Firefox 4 ignores Arial Narrow and goes to Arial as the font - it then recognizes the attribute font-stretch: condensed.
  • IE, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox 3 recognizes the Arial Narrow font - and then ignores the font-stretch: condensed attribute.

Modified by wickedisco