Certain text displays as random characters on some pages
As of this morning, for some reason, certain websites present, random garbled text where normal text should be. This occurs on some sites and not on others. My second computer, running an earlier Mac OS, is working just fine, and other browsers don't have this problem.
Hoping someone can help. A screenshot from Wikipedia is attached.
All Replies (7)
Please note here how only certain text is affected
This turned out to be a matter Firefox needing an update. Apologies!
You can check in Font Book for font issues like corrupted and duplicate fonts.
This can be caused by a problem with fonts you have installed locally and that might be corrupted or are missing variants. You will have to identify and remove corrupted font(s).
Note that you shouldn't disable "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" as this will cause issues with iconic fonts used by webpages to display small icons (you may see text labels instead of icons).
You can right-click and select "Inspect" to open the built-in 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 Fonts 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.
Modified by cor-el
Etnier said
This turned out to be a matter Firefox needing an update. Apologies!
The problem returned, and I am on the current release of Firefox (107.0.1). I am going to attempt to respond to the two contributors input here:
To Dropa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://www.usaudiomart.com/classifieds/all/ Both show the problem for me, running MacOS 13.0.1. I am afraid I don't know what "Site issues" means in the context in which you are using it.
To cor-el: I am not technically sophisticated enough to make sense of much you say here. I am also hampered by a stroke that affects cognition somewhat. Using a search engine, "Font Book" is either a Windows function, or an IOS app. I am using MacOS 13.0.1. Checking Firefox preferences and attempting to use the inspector shows everything to be pretty much normal although really, the inspector display is over my head.
Thanks very much to both of you for your help when I first reported this issue.
FWIW: It has occurred to me to take the drastic step of resetting everything in Firefox, but I have been unable to find that as an option (in Settings).
Further, for years Firefox has been storing my passwords on its own, rather than letting MacOS handle it: I need to either be assured that a reset won't wipe all of these passwords, or find a way to back them up and restore them after a reset.
Font Book is a standard Mac OS application that you can find in /Applications/Utilities/. You can use the Finder application or "Launchpad -> Other" to open it.
I am deeply appreciative of everybody's contributions here: many, many thanks!
I deactivated a couple of surplus add-ons, and that seemed to help for a while, but then the problem retuurned. I then deactivated all non-system fonts and reactivated only the handful that I have in regular use. That seemed to fix things, but it's only been an hour or so. We'll see.
Again, my sincerest thanks to everybody who has given input here. Apologies for dropping out of touch for a while bear.