Question

Added a second image

I have the exact same problem. I get it a lot when I am scrolling the page. I uploaded a pic of this site where the distortions are pretty strong. The more I scroll back and forth the worse it gets. Once the distorted text is highlighted they disappear but yeah... that's hardly a solution.

Got Windows 7 x64, ATI Radeon 3870 HD, Firefox version 20.0.

I just noticed, on youtube when I move the cursor over the video links, the text of other video links will randomly distort. This seems to cause the distortions more "reliable" even.

First pic is where the text is ok, 2nd pic is where I just moved the cursor down the links and then up again.

While I have exactly the same problem I've discovered that it only happens when I run fullscreen. The same page is fine when I switch to a smaller screen and immediately returns when switching back to fullscreen. It also seems to come and go as I scroll down the page. It happens on all pages regardless of typeface of layout. Mozilla needs to fix this ASAP!

What all of these people said. I have the exact same problems and it started after the latest Firefox update.

Try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

• Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

• https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/09/hardware-acceleration/

Try to update the graphic display driver.

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-upgrade-my-graphics-drivers

Cor-el, it's my work PC that's having the issue, so I'll have to try that on Monday. Thank you for the suggestion.

Updating my display driver worked for me so far. Turning hardware acceleration off before I updated the driver worked for me as well. Thanks cor-el <3 ^^

It should not be up to us to suddenly have to update drivers, etc. Everything was fine on my system until Firefox upgraded to 19. My drivers and all software are already up to date. This is a BUG, simple as that!

I have this problem also, on an AMD system with windows 7 x64 and radeon 4350 graphics. It appeared immediately after installing the Win7 64 platform update KB2670838 on Feb 26 not the Firefox 19 update a few days earlier, although it only affects Firefox. My drivers were up to date, but turning off hardware acceleration fixed it.

You're right! I have a similar setup: Win 7 Pro 64, AMD Radeon HD4650. I turned off hardware acceleration and the problem went away. Note, as I mentioned before that the problem, at least for me, only occurs when running anything other than full screen. In full screen it's fine even with acceleration on. Thanks for the advice.

Hey, I was trying to find a solution, but for the past week my firefox is doing something weird with fonts, I didn't see any errors on images yet. I downloaded AMD Vision Control Center, but I don't know anything about it :( The problem is happening even when I'm writing right now. Here is screen:

Please tell me what to do (I already unchecked acceleration, didn't help). roxy

Thank you.

Problem solved.

Both suggestions--turning off hardware acceleration (HA) and updating driver--worked. After turning off HA, the problem resolved. I then checked for an updated display driver via Windows 7, which found one. After updating the driver, I turned HA back on and the text distortion seems to have stopped.

Still puzzled, though, about why only Firefox 19.0 was affected; no other browser (Chrome/IE) or local application was affected. Anyone know what changed with v19.0 to cause this issue to arise?

roxcafe,

Try updating your display driver. In Windows 7 (the process may be similar for other versions of Windows), go to Control Panel > Device Manager > Display Adapter. Right-click on your adapter, then click on "Update Driver Software." Click on "Search automatically for updated driver software." Windows will determine whether your driver software has been updated and will install it automatically.

This method is conservative in that it will only install a version virtually guaranteed to be compatible with your PC. Alternatively, go to your PC's manufacturer's website and search for updates there.

IF you cannot find a suitable updated driver, stick with shutting off Hardware Acceleration in Firefox 19.0 as described in cor-el's 3/1/2013 post (first bullet).

Thanks very much for your answer DrBB01. I have ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series, updating it now, let you know if this works asap.

It helped! I updated my driver and it's all good, thx DrBB01!

I'm glad it worked!

I have the same problem - SAMSUNG r720 Screen Size 17.30 (resolution: 1600 x 900 pixels), Windows 7 32 bit, Radeon HD 4650 with latest drivers. I am running FireFox v19.0.2.

DISTORTED TEXT * * * * * I also have ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series, no updated driver available - Turning off Hardware Acceleration made no improvement. Problem began with Firefox 19.0 update!

Turning OFF the hardware acceleration option under "Tools" fixed the problem for me. I had already tried updating my AMD/ATI drivers, with absolutely no improvement. I had noticed that the problem was worse in BETA / 3rd party builds, such as Waterfox and Pale Moon, and was better, but still seemed to exist in FF 17.0.1. Also touching, or rolling over the corrupted text with the cursor cleared the corruption instantly. The problem looked exactly like the images "Avallon" has previously posted.

For the record, this problem was experienced with an ASRock P55 MB, w/ an i7-875k CPU with dual Sapphire HD-3870 video cards driving Dell 24" U2410 & 2407Wfp LCD monitors.

Wish I had looked here *hours* ago. THANKS!

I forgot to mention, in my previous post, that I was using W7 Pro x64. I believe that "vankuvr" is correct in his assertion that this all may have started with the W7 update KB2670838 on Feb 26. That is about when I first noticed the issue.

"brw111" stated that the problem was only visible to him/her when NOT running a full screen window w/FF. My situation was exactly the OPPOSITE - the text was only corrupted when viewing FULL SCREEN.

Please see my other post for system specifics.

I must agree with RustyJones - it all started when I updated Firefox to 19. I have also updated my ATI Radeon 4650 HD driver to latest version 13.1. Esstek - Does new drivers of graphic card might be the cause of text distortions? When I disable Hardware Acceleration it helped a bit. I confirm: touching, rolling, highlighting corrupted text with the cursor cleared the corruption. Thanks in advance for your help :)

In response to "heavydrinker", I believe I was running AMD/ATI v12.6 Radeon drivers when the problem first became apparent. I quickly upgraded to 13.1 to try and fix the problem, because it certainly seemed like it was either a deteriorating video card (bad memory) or a video driver issue. I did NOT try to downgrade the drivers after I had upgraded them and then disabled HA to try and isolate the issue. Disabling HA (hardware acceleration) completely resolved the issue for me. The ebay Summary page with Pale Moon Version: 19.0.2-x64 was the worst case for me. Scrolling made the text either corrupted, or uncorrupted, depending on the previous state. Waterfox 18.0.1 and Nightly 22.0a1 were also terrible - much worse than FF 19.0.2. I swear I also noticed just a bit of corruption w/ Google Chrome Version 25.0.1364.172 m, but now I can't recreate the problem. I am happy now just to leave things alone and enjoy, *while it lasts*, distortion free browsing...

To essetek: After what you wrote - conclusion is that it must be a problem with the graphics card drivers. I have turned off hardware acceleration completely. So far everything works fine but the font is not smoothed. What is interesting, on Google Chrome and IE 9 everything works perfectly, there is no text distortion. Any suggestion why?

Same thing with my computer ever since the new 19.0.2 version was installed, this problem (web page fonts being distorted when scrolling) was not happening w/ IE10 or Safari browsers.

I am Running Windows 7 32 bit  ATI Radeon HD4300/4500 Series.  Once I up dated my drivers the problem stopped, I re checked HA in Firefox and web pages display fine now.

AMD offers an auto detect program if you can't find a driver from windows driver select, here is the link to the web page: [[AMD|http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/auto_detect.aspx]]

So far updating my driver has worked but I do notice at times I have had to still uncheck HA and then recheck it again and works for awhile.

lets hope that Firefox fixes this problem.

I have the same issue. I'm also using an AMD machine with ADI Radeon HD4200. The Windows update KB2670838 was installed on my machine on the 28th Feb, but I only noticed the issue today, so I'm not sure that its related to the KB in question, although this KB deals with DirectX so I wouldn't neccessarily rule it out at this stage. The problem is limited to the Mozilla Firefox browser and mine is currently at version 19.0.2 as are many others reported here, so this appears to be the common factor.

I've turned off hardware accelleration which has removed the distortion for me, although scrolling is (predictably) not as smooth but still very usable. As far as I am concerned this is not a driver issue, as other browsers and applications work fine. It is evidently an issue with hardware accelleration support in this version of Firefox. Turning off this feature is therefore a temporary 'fix' so let's hope it will be fixed in the next release.

We will have to wait and we will see. Let's hope that the Mozilla will fix it :/

Ok here is something I just noticed even though I have updated my driver. If you go into Tools> Options with HA checked click on content, any drop down box dealing with font size even in advanced settings has the text in the drop down boxes messed up, all other drop down boxes for other content is displayed neatly and clearly.

If you uncheck HA then all the messed up drop down boxes will return to neat and clear text in the drop down.

pkicker-- Thanks for posting screenshots. What you are experiencing is very different than I had experienced. Before I updated my video driver, the text "distortion" I had was more like having random pixels turning off in individual text characters throughout an an entire frame. I could actually watch this process occur in real time, like a "negative" of standing on a hillside and watching lights in a town go out one by one at bedtime.

Your screenshots show specific sections of your Font window (right-hand side) are more than distorted; more like jumbled. I suspect this is a different problem than I experienced; if it is limited to the drop-down "Font" menu in "Options" it may be idiosyncratic. Whether it is related to your original problem is not clear.

DRBB01, I also was experiencing the same as other members when viewing web pages, any type of scrolling would make page fonts become slightly distorted and the only way to correct was slowly scroll up or down and highlight the distorted area to reset the fonts on the page.

I actually found the changing of fonts size in tools by accident, I wanted to see if I could change fonts and as you can see, when I hit a drop down box total distortion, but if I uncheck HA then the text in the drop down box is normal.

I just think its very strange that Fonts on pages is the problem we are all experiencing and then any attempt in Tools >Options>Content; associated with Font Size drop down boxes is distorted while HA is checked.  Any other drop down box while HA is checked is fine its only drop down boxes associated with user changing font sizes.

Its also very strange now that I have updated my driver web pages for the moment are no longer being distorted while HA is checked, but as you can see from my photos any attempt to change font size while HA is checked gets me that text distortion. If I uncheck HA then the drop down boxes associated with Font size is fine.

pkicker-- I cannot replicate the issue with the Font drop-down menu. Unless others are having this problem, you may have two separate, though possibly related, problems with Firefox.

Although we all seem to have had a text problem only when using Firefox, this suggests something unique to Firefox. The fact that it only affected limited users suggests something we all had in common--either a Firefox add-on or other local software--that interacted with Firefox to create the text problem. In my particular case, turning off HA eliminated the problem. However, after upgrading my Radeon 4350 driver, turning on HA has not reproduced the distortion problem.

After you updated your driver, it sounds like the distortion problem abated, but was not eliminated, and you have discovered another problem (Font menu). Much as you may be tempted to assume the two problems are both related and caused by something evil in Firefox, unless others confirm having the Font menu problem—with or without the original text distortion problem—there is no way to tell whether the problems are related. Hopefully, if others have had the Font menu problem, they will find this thread and report it.

Good luck. I hope the Font menu issue is a small bug that is resolved in the next FF update, and not a harbinger of a slowly developing hardware problem.

I don't think the 2 are necessarily related, the changing of fonts issue only started after I up dated my driver, I would say that its more of an issue w/ Fox not working on AMD drivers

well today's update top Firefox 20.0 didn't resolve the issues.

Try to set the gfx.content.azure.enabled pref to false or if this didn't help disable Direct2D by setting the gfx.direct2d.disabled pref to true on the about:config page and leave hardware acceleration otherwise enabled.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-upgrade-my-graphics-drivers

• Anti-Aliasing Tuner: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/anti-aliasing-tuner/

This: "set gfx.content.azure.enabled pref to false" seems to be working great for me...at least, at this moment. I changed the pref in about:config, then went back and re-enabled hardware acceleration under Tools/Options/General/Browsing, and then checked to see if any of the *known* problem sites were happy, and things seem fine. Thanks, cor-el!!!

Ok, I finally figured out how to do it and I guess it is working for now, hope this new setting doesn't interfere with any video quality?

For those of you who can't update their drivers because you are using laptop graphics cards provided by vendors like Toshiba and can't use the reference drivers from AMD, simply download Mobility Modder.net to modify AMD's reference drivers to support these cards.

Vendors like Toshiba rarely update their drivers, the last update they provided for the AMD Mobility Radeon HD 3xxx series was in 2010. Where as AMD update their drivers every 3 months or so. I am sure other vendors who prevent reference drivers to work are the same.