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Our office is seeing ??????????? instead of text when we open FireFox.

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by FredMcD

Chrome is fine. We are on Macs. This happens on many different web sites, not just one. We use Mac Cleaner and it helps but when we open the next day, same issue.

Chrome is fine. We are on Macs. This happens on many different web sites, not just one. We use Mac Cleaner and it helps but when we open the next day, same issue.

Chosen solution

This can happen when Firefox has a problem to access locally installed fonts because of sandbox security issues. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox

You can set this pref to 2 or 1 on the about:config page to lower the sandbox security setting.

security.sandbox.content.level = 1

Close and restart Firefox to make the change effective.

If '1' still doesn't have an effect then try '0' to disable the sandbox.

If this didn't work then undo/reverse the change and reset the pref via the right-click context menu to the default value.

Type about:config<enter> in the address bar. If a warning screen comes up, press the I Accept the Risk button. At the top of the screen is a search bar.

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All Replies (2)

Are the question marks in individual boxes? That typically indicates that the page called for a font that Firefox couldn't access, so it used a fallback font in its place, which sometimes is a symbol font.

Reasons may include:

(1) You use a third party font manager that stores fonts in a folder that Firefox does not allow web pages to access (e.g., when I open Firefox and search, the results come up with a lot of boxes with "A's" in them)

(2) The page uses downloadable fonts and font downloading is blocked for some reason (e.g., by an extension or an intentional settings change)

(3) A common font like Helvetica or Arial is corrupted

What does Mac Cleaner do?? That could shed light on the source of the issue.

But meanwhile, could you check out the suggestions in this thread:

Chosen Solution

This can happen when Firefox has a problem to access locally installed fonts because of sandbox security issues. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox

You can set this pref to 2 or 1 on the about:config page to lower the sandbox security setting.

security.sandbox.content.level = 1

Close and restart Firefox to make the change effective.

If '1' still doesn't have an effect then try '0' to disable the sandbox.

If this didn't work then undo/reverse the change and reset the pref via the right-click context menu to the default value.

Type about:config<enter> in the address bar. If a warning screen comes up, press the I Accept the Risk button. At the top of the screen is a search bar.