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Displaying weird characters across multiple sites

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Take a look at these screenshots to see what I'm talking about


This happened

Every time Firefox opened

Out of the blue

User Agent

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.1.249.1036 Safari/532.5

Take a look at these screenshots to see what I'm talking about == This happened == Every time Firefox opened == Out of the blue == == User Agent == Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.1.249.1036 Safari/532.5

All Replies (5)

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What screenshots? :-)

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This issue can be caused by the bitmap version of the Helvetica or Geneva font or another (bitmap) font that can't be displayed by Firefox in that font size. Firefox can't display that font in the specified size and displays gibberish instead. You can test that by zooming out (View > Zoom > Zoom Out, Ctrl -) to make the text smaller.

Uninstall (remove) all variants of that not working font to make Firefox use another font or find a True type version of that font that doesn't have the problem. ..... See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Issues_related_to_fonts#Gibberish

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The problem I have in Chrome is all my folders in Lastpass vault are displaying the same character errors. I can understand what core-el is saying but that's not the problem here. My fonts are not broken. What do I try next?

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How do you know for sure your fonts aren't broken? (I thought mine weren't either, but re-installed them from another source anyways and it solved my problems).

I would recommend installing FireBug to inspect the broken fonts. Using firebug you should try 2 things:

1. Change the font-size of the specific broken font. 2. Change the font-family of the specific broken font.

Most likely you will find that the font breaks with a specific family at a specific size. In that case you will be able to (re)install that font on your computer.