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Why don't certain websites display fonts or icons correctly?

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  • 3 have this problem
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  • Last reply by tonys44

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I have a problem that I have seen reported before, the fonts/icons display as rectangular boxes with characters in them. I am running Windows 7 64 bit and am using Firefox V 42.0. I have cleared the History including the font cache and have checked Allow websites to use their own fonts. Nothing fixes this problem and everything displays correctly in IE and Chrome.

I have a problem that I have seen reported before, the fonts/icons display as rectangular boxes with characters in them. I am running Windows 7 64 bit and am using Firefox V 42.0. I have cleared the History including the font cache and have checked Allow websites to use their own fonts. Nothing fixes this problem and everything displays correctly in IE and Chrome.

All Replies (7)

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Image file uploaded.

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Special icons are usually supplied by a font that is downloaded from the server (@font-face) as you might see by little boxes that show the hex code of the characters instead. If you have a font installed that covers this Unicode range then you may see a real character and not the little box with the CSS code.

Make sure that you allow pages to choose their own fonts.

  • Tools > Options > Content : Fonts & Colors > Advanced: [X] "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"

You can check the gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled pref on the about:config page and make sure that it is set to true (if necessary double-click the line to toggle its value to true).

Firefox 41+ will allow icon fonts that use PUA code points to work with the font setting in "Options/Preferences > Content > Advanced" disabled. When unsupported code points are used then you see the little boxes with the hex code.

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Thanks, but I have the "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" already checked. How do i get to the about.config page? I do not see that option anywhere in the tools and options. If I type it in the address bar, it adds www and I get an error message.

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You need to use a colon and not a dot as separator to open the about:config page via the location bar.

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

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Thanks. I was able to get to the about.config page and the value is marked "true". I never had this problem until a few months ago. Every setting that I review seems to be set correctly. At first I thought this might be an issue with Microsoft Silverlight, because it is very prevalent on Microsoft content web pages.

Thanks for all of your help.

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Do you see any messages about fonts in the Web Console (Firefox menu button or Tools > Web Developer)?

You can also check in the Network monitor if any font files are requested and loaded.

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Yes. The messages are shown in the attached.