Sites using custom fonts for icons interact poorly with gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled
I have disabled downloadable fonts because they invariably look horrible on my system due to having been designed by people who havent considered what the fonts will look like on systems without font smoothing.
However, many web sites nowadays are using their custom fonts to contain icons necessary for navigation in the site. For example: sourceforge, github, mint, tldrlegal, mailinator, weather.com, etc.etc.
So what we need is an option like "use downloadable font for missing glyphs". That way, I could see the glyphs through the downloaded font, but the downloaded font would be blocked from use for glyphs which would be visible without the use of the downloaded font.
I know this is a bizarre scenario, sort of the inverse of a fallback font, but this practice seems to be emerging rapidly and it is very disrespectful of user preferences.
It might be difficult to implement, because 'allow downloadable fonts' was probably intended for security and bandwidth control, so firefox is going to be ignoring the fonts altogether, most likely. But what would need to happen to get what I'm requesting would be for firefox to download the font actually, and then deprioritize it to a maximum and use it as a fallback font before the fallback font of last resort. That way, the custom glyphs would get caught at that stage.
I thought about posting this as a suggestion straight to bugzilla, but maybe you can think of a workaround here first.
All Replies (6)
I can't think of a way to accomplish what you're describing.
Usually the fonts used for symbols are not the ones used for text, so one approach might be to generally disregard downloadable fonts except for those fonts which you actually need. Still, there's no built-in way to do that, either. I did find a discussion of how to use Adblock Plus filters to do something like that: How to selectively block web fonts? - mozillaZine Forums. For most people, writing these filters is going to be a difficult challenge...
Firefox tracks a number of permissions on a site-by-site basis; you can view most of them on the Permissions tab of the Page Info dialog. It might make sense to have this be another permission that Firefox handles the same way.
You mentioned that your computer does not know how to smooth fonts, is this setting set to true make a difference: gfx.use_text_smoothing_setting
The built in preference it to choose a preferred font in the preferences/options > fonts and if necessary you can uncheck the box for letting sites choose their fonts. However this is not what you are trying to accomplish.
Perhaps an exception list? Though this would require alot of maintenance if there were alot of sites that did this. Maybe we can file a bug that would suggest a filter feature, what do you think?
If so please create a bug in this component: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Core&component...
Developer add on- Font Finder
That option doesn't affect whether firefox smooths fonts. My computer doesn't know how to smooth fonts (except when it does) because I've told windows 7 not to smooth fonts.
An exception list is not going to work in the long run. I am assuming that within a couple of years 100% of websites will be doing icons this way. It's just the worst case scenario I'm looking forward to. So basically, the web will be unusable without custom fonts, for this one pathetic reason. So, we need to come up with a way to solve that larger problem.
Regarding a filter feature.. what if we allowed fonts to be downloaded, but prohibited their use unless the user specifies that it be allowed for a specific glyph? In other words, suppose a list of rules like this:
- DENY *downloadable*
- ALLOW MoronicFont *missing*
- ALLOW UsesStarInsteadOfSpaceFont 0x0020
In the case of glyphs which are missing or denied after the rules are processed, the rules can be processed again, with the *missing* flag set. Anything still missing after that can use the fallback font (or maybe the concept of a fallback font could be written into this system with other rules)
There is also a work around for font issues in version 27 for your platform found here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=812695#c414
I wonder whether there is a development mailing list or UI mailing list that would be a good place to talk this out. Unfortunately, this support forum is more like an Emergency Room than a hacking space.
Another one bites the dust... Urbandictionary.com falls prey to the glyphicon scourge
I posted a bug here.
Modified by mgambrell