Make Firefox Stop Using This Font.
September 18, 2010 12:57 PM
Why did Firefox start using some stupid script font while I'm browsing?
I installed a bunch of new fonts on my Mac (running OSX) using Add Fonts through Fontbook. Now Firefox is using some weird script font for most, but not all, pages--for example, page text on Metafilter comes up in the correct font, but headlines are in script; and on Google News the page text is script but headlines are not. I checked my Firefox preferences, and the box next to "Allow pages to use their own fonts" is still checked. I'm reasonably certain that the entire interweb didn't suddenly decide to use the same unreadable script font. How can I fix this?
I installed a bunch of new fonts on my Mac (running OSX) using Add Fonts through Fontbook. Now Firefox is using some weird script font for most, but not all, pages--for example, page text on Metafilter comes up in the correct font, but headlines are in script; and on Google News the page text is script but headlines are not. I checked my Firefox preferences, and the box next to "Allow pages to use their own fonts" is still checked. I'm reasonably certain that the entire interweb didn't suddenly decide to use the same unreadable script font. How can I fix this?
Page text goes to Helvetica 16 point, which is what I have as my default font; headings and suchlike are also Helvetica in a larger size.
posted by goatdog at 1:04 PM on September 18, 2010
posted by goatdog at 1:04 PM on September 18, 2010
If I understand what you mean by "headlines", you mean like the title of the this post rendered above the date? Looking at the CSS for it, it's "Arial, sans-serif". So installing the new fonts made it so Mac OS renders either Arial, or more likely "sans-serif", to actually be the script font. I don't know the details of how font aliases work in OSX, but at the very least in Firefox go to Preferences, Fonts, Advanced and make sure the "Sans-serif" setting isn't weird; or you can select what your default sans-serif font is.
posted by skynxnex at 1:28 PM on September 18, 2010
posted by skynxnex at 1:28 PM on September 18, 2010
This happened to me once. On my work computer, thankfully, and I'm not really supposed to be doing a ton of web browsing during work hours. But still!
The best I could figure out was that Firefox randomly decided to switch out all instances of the Georgia font (as seen on many sites that use serifed text, i.e. the New York Times) with some variation on Curlz. No idea why this happened or whether it was a bug in Firefox, Fontbook, the fonts in question, or anything.
If you can override this via forcing all typefaces to appear in your default font, I would do that. I never got the problem to go away entirely on my work computer (I think a firefox update might have fixed it at some point, but it came back).
Not clear on whether it was a firefox update, a fontbook update, or a tweak in my installed fonts that temporarily fixed it, unfortunately.
posted by Sara C. at 8:59 PM on September 18, 2010
The best I could figure out was that Firefox randomly decided to switch out all instances of the Georgia font (as seen on many sites that use serifed text, i.e. the New York Times) with some variation on Curlz. No idea why this happened or whether it was a bug in Firefox, Fontbook, the fonts in question, or anything.
If you can override this via forcing all typefaces to appear in your default font, I would do that. I never got the problem to go away entirely on my work computer (I think a firefox update might have fixed it at some point, but it came back).
Not clear on whether it was a firefox update, a fontbook update, or a tweak in my installed fonts that temporarily fixed it, unfortunately.
posted by Sara C. at 8:59 PM on September 18, 2010
Turns out one of the fonts I installed was corrupted. I deleted it, and everything went back to normal.
posted by goatdog at 8:20 AM on September 19, 2010
posted by goatdog at 8:20 AM on September 19, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Solomon at 12:59 PM on September 18, 2010