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Distorted fonts on tabs and address bar

  • 1 reply
  • 11 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

voyager2
voyager2
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I'm getting distorted fonts, mostly in the upper area of the screen (tabs, address bar and the area under the address bar). There doesn't seem to be any repeatable pattern. Sometimes one or a few of the tab labels are distorted. Sometimes the address bar characters are distorted. Sometimes it's another area that has distorted characters. Sometimes the characters are totally unreadable, sometimes I can make out what the characters are. Sometimes the characters will un-distort if I move the mouse cursor over the distorted characters. Sometimes I have to click on the distorted characters to get them to clear up. And other times nothing I do will fix it. One strange thing I noticed is that sometimes, one of the tabs with somewhat readable characters has the wrong label (it's actually the label of the tab 2 places to the right!).

I'm getting distorted fonts, mostly in the upper area of the screen (tabs, address bar and the area under the address bar). There doesn't seem to be any repeatable pattern. Sometimes one or a few of the tab labels are distorted. Sometimes the address bar characters are distorted. Sometimes it's another area that has distorted characters. Sometimes the characters are totally unreadable, sometimes I can make out what the characters are. Sometimes the characters will un-distort if I move the mouse cursor over the distorted characters. Sometimes I have to click on the distorted characters to get them to clear up. And other times nothing I do will fix it. One strange thing I noticed is that sometimes, one of the tabs with somewhat readable characters has the wrong label (it's actually the label of the tab 2 places to the right!).

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox (Tools) > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).

In Firefox 4 Safe mode disables extensions and disables hardware acceleration.

  • Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

If disabling hardware acceleration works then check if there is an update available for your graphics display driver.

In Firefox 4 you can use one of these to start in Safe mode:

  • Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled
  • Hold down the Shift key while double clicking the Firefox desktop shortcut (Windows)