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Since upgrading to Firefox 33, The open sans font did not display correctly when specified by a website.

  • 7 majibu
  • 20 wana tatizo hili
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by saewulf

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Some of the vertical lines in the fonts are double width like a mixture of bold and normal font weight. I have hardware accellaration disabled. The problem is not fixed when I change default font settings. The problem is not resolved be resetting zoom to 0.

Inspect Element identifies the problem happens when the website selects open Sans. If I stop sites selecting fonts and force the defaults I don not get the problem. Therefore the problem is with Firefox 33.1 rendering certain fonts specified by websites.

My machine is windows vista and Open Sans is not shown in the font list. However this was not a problem with previous versions of Firefox.

I did need to do a reset of firefox parameters during the upgrade to 33 so maybe ther eis some other parameter which needs changing to help render fonts which are not loaded on the machine?

Some of the vertical lines in the fonts are double width like a mixture of bold and normal font weight. I have hardware accellaration disabled. The problem is not fixed when I change default font settings. The problem is not resolved be resetting zoom to 0. Inspect Element identifies the problem happens when the website selects open Sans. If I stop sites selecting fonts and force the defaults I don not get the problem. Therefore the problem is with Firefox 33.1 rendering certain fonts specified by websites. My machine is windows vista and Open Sans is not shown in the font list. However this was not a problem with previous versions of Firefox. I did need to do a reset of firefox parameters during the upgrade to 33 so maybe ther eis some other parameter which needs changing to help render fonts which are not loaded on the machine?

Chosen solution

Is the operating system using font smoothing or cleartype? That makes a difference.

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All Replies (7)

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Here is a screenshot:

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Try to disable OMTC and leave hardware acceleration in Firefox enabled.

Do other fonts have the same issue?

You can do a font test to see if you can identify corrupted font(s).

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Thanks Cor-el. I've re-enabled hardware acceleration and disabled OMTC. No sign of the dragons. I've also downloaded and installed the Open Sans font family. None of these change the display in Firefox.

the font test shows open sans as bad but others such as myriad pro look a bit strange. I printed the test to a pdf. The print preview screen has the problem but acrobat renders the fonts correctly. So does IE8.

I thought about trying to output the whole set of parameters from about:config but at the moment havnt seen how to do that. Anyway this site doesnt let me upload a pdf.

Any more ideas welcome.

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You could try this setting in about:config: gfx.use_text_smoothing_setting -> true

It works for me.

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Thanks Finitarry. I've trid that change but the problem still exists. Maybe it is one of the other rendering parameters or now firefox wants cleartype fonts while my vist machine only has trutype and opentype. No doubt I will have learned something about fots by the time this is solved.

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Suluhisho teule

Is the operating system using font smoothing or cleartype? That makes a difference.

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Ive gone through control panel to windows appearance and effects. There I enabled cleartype and behold the problem is solved.

Presumably acrobat didnt have the problem because it is for print and doesnt use cleartype. And maybe IE8 didnt need or rely on cleartype because it is old.

The other settings changes suggested above are still in place and so may be contributing to the solution.

Many Thanks Finitarry