Explain why headlines on some sites are outlined in Firefox 3

September 10, 2008 8:54 PM

Why are headlines on a number of websites appearing only as outlines ever since I downloaded Firefox 3?

The affected sites include jeffcroft.com (pic), problogger.net (pic) and copyblogger.com (pic).

Is there some setting I can change to fix this or is this poor coding on their behalf? Or is it intentional?

I'm surprised I haven't seen any discussion about this anywhere online because I've found it a very noticeable change on a number of websites.

(I'm on Mac OS X Leopard, by the way.)

posted by puffl to computers & internet (6 comments total)

My first guess, Its a font problem with a font you have installed on your computer.

Possibly Helvetica Neue.

Close your browser.
Go into /Applications/Font Book Find Helvetica Neue and disable it.
Then launch your browser and see if the problem exists still.
posted by gog at 9:09 PM on September 10, 2008

Strange. I'm on Mac OS X Leopard with recently downloaded Firefox 3 and I see those three headlines as normal, filled in text. I don't know what it is but I don't think it's intentional.
posted by Nickel at 9:13 PM on September 10, 2008

Gog, looks like you've hit it on the head. Disabling Helvetica Neue makes the headlines appear, though obviously they render in a different font.

Now I just have to figure out how to fix Helvetica Neue on my system…

(I was sure I started seeing these headlines right after I started using Firefox 3, so just assumed that was the problem.)
posted by puffl at 9:18 PM on September 10, 2008

I did some further searching, If you re-enable Helvetica Neue and try it in another program does it display properly?

I found mention of Firefox 3 changing how it renders fonts on this page here where they were talking about Helvetica Neue specifically but they didnt mention the behavior your having.
posted by gog at 9:28 PM on September 10, 2008

By the way, thanks for the quick answer. I guess I should have realised it was more likely to be something on my system rather than something in Firefox!
posted by puffl at 9:30 PM on September 10, 2008

Yes, it seems like I had some sort of conflict over Helvetica Neue in my fonts. I did a bit of fiddling around, involving disabling and re-enabling the font, and it appears to be fixed. Thanks very much for the tech support.
posted by puffl at 9:32 PM on September 10, 2008