The font on Google, Facebook, and several other websites, though not all, is bold no matter what I do.
Since I installed Firefox on my newly-fixed computer (was completely wiped, installed FF 5-6-15), the font for several sites has been bold, no matter how I set my preferences. These include Facebook, Google, and Gmail. If I tell it not to allow pages to choose their own fonts, this problem is fixed, but characters such as arrows don't show up on other websites.
What I really want is to be able to see that I've read something by having the font go back to normal, rather than bold. The only way I can do this is by disallowing pages to choose their own fonts. Is there any way to fix this?
Chosen solution
You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.
- Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration
Some graphics display drivers also have settings that can affect the appearance of fonts.
Were you able to find which fonts are affected via the font test?
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What font is used in cases where it shows bold?
It is possible that the font is corrupted Also make sure that you aren't zooming the page because that can cause Firefox to use a bolder font type. Reset the page zoom on pages that cause problems.
- View > Zoom > Reset (Ctrl/Command+0 (zero))
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Zoom_text_of_web_pages
You can right-click on a web page and select "Inspect Element" to open the Inspector (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer). You can check the font used for selected text in the Font tab in the right pane of the Inspector.
You can do a font test to see if you can identify corrupted font(s).
I'm using Arial Unicode MS, but it looks the same in Arial, if I'm using Non-serif, but the problem persists, and it looks the same if I use serif, with Times New Roman, actually.
Chosen Solution
You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.
- Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration
Some graphics display drivers also have settings that can affect the appearance of fonts.
Were you able to find which fonts are affected via the font test?
Oh my god, that worked! Thank you so much!
With Firefox set to allow pages to choose their own fonts...
Could you check the problem font(s) using this method: right-click the text, then Inspect Element (Q). This will open the Inspector section of the Developer Tools. On the right side, there is a little sidebar with different sections. Try the Fonts section to see what font Firefox is using for the problem text.
For example, on Facebook, the base font on the login page appears to be Helvetica but if you don't have Helvetica, then Arial. On my system (Windows 7), Arial is used for that text. In other cases, a fancier downloaded font name Freight Sans is used (see attached screen shot) and if that is not available, Lucida Grande.
(Windows systems normally do not have Lucida Grande unless you install the old Safari for Windows, which is riddled with known security vulnerabilities, so I don't recommend it.)
