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firefox and thunderbird display strange gibberish

  • 2 replies
  • 18 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by DaPiGG

both firefox & thunderbird are displaying strange "gibberish" (even while i am typing this message into this form i see arabic or greek letters - and have to type it in notepad and then paste) It is only in some areas - of websites and in some emails.

i have all my settings as "english" - and this seemed to start when i upgraded thunderbird (3.0.4)

This happened

Every time Firefox opened

== i think when i upgraded thunderbird

both firefox & thunderbird are displaying strange "gibberish" (even while i am typing this message into this form i see arabic or greek letters - and have to type it in notepad and then paste) It is only in some areas - of websites and in some emails. i have all my settings as "english" - and this seemed to start when i upgraded thunderbird (3.0.4) == This happened == Every time Firefox opened == i think when i upgraded thunderbird

All Replies (2)

This issue can be caused by the Helvetica or Geneva bitmap 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 works better.

glad i found this, was bugging the very arse of me for ages. cheers