OS Font issues... Need HELP!

November 15, 2008 1:55 PM

HELP! I am going nutty. Some of my MAC OS fonts and some web page fonts display as Black with a white outline which makes it very difficult to read. It happens in all browsers as well. I assume it is a font issue but have no idea how to fix it or which font it is affecting.
posted by Vanna79 to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

it's possible your "font cache" needs rebuilding. Try the utility "onyx" for a gui that can do that.

If you create a new user account, does the same problem occur?
posted by lrivers at 2:17 PM on November 15, 2008

I had this issue for a while, always with Helvetica Neue. It turned out that I had two versions of the font installed, and disabling one of them in Font Book fixed the problem.
posted by cathodeheart at 2:26 PM on November 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Which fonts exactly are displaying with an outline? If you don't know the names, some links to pages that are displaying incorrectly will help.
posted by Typographica at 2:33 PM on November 15, 2008

If you have a font called "Radioactive" installed, you must disable it in Font Book.
posted by Electrius at 2:46 PM on November 15, 2008

Best answer: Onyx is good, but Yasu is much easier to navigate. Just be sure to check the Font cache bit and let it run, enter your password and restart.
posted by KimG at 3:30 PM on November 15, 2008

Whenever I run into recurring font issues, I run Font Book and check the list of fonts for black bullets, which indicate a possible conflict. I then expand any of the font families with bullets next to them and then disable or outright delete the individual bulleted items. That usually does it.
posted by pmbuko at 5:56 PM on November 15, 2008

Response by poster: I have tried YASU and it didn't fix the issue... disabled fonts in Font Book... no font "Radioactive" in there either... I am at a loss. One web page that has this issue is Netvibes the "add content" tab shows with the white outline. I am going to resort to (more) booze soon! HELP.
posted by Vanna79 at 3:16 AM on November 16, 2008

Response by poster: ONYX didn't fix the issue either fyi.
posted by Vanna79 at 3:34 AM on November 16, 2008