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Firefox 52.2 ESR works mostly ok on CentOS-7, but fails to render math equations in Wikipedia. Works on other box. .CSS issue?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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This question has been asked before, tried the solutions. Adblock disabled, cookies and cache cleared, theme set to default. About:config options tweaked to defaults. Specific example: This wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_linear_equations has math equations and matrix images, which fail to render. They appear briefly, then disappear. Flash plugin disabled. Perhaps default .CSS files altered? How to check this? Note: FF menu: Tools/Page-Info/Media shows equation images fine. Also, can click on blank part of screen where image is, and right-click "view image", and math equations/matrix images render ok. But page show only blank white space. Guys, this should not be this hard, here in 2019. Default .CSS might have been changed in my desperate attempts to change horrible bright-white page to a dark-theme. FIrefox with super-bright-white page is a bad experience, but blanked-out non-display-of-inline images, of course, makes Firefox sadly useless. If I can find the solution, I will post it here. This should *not* be this difficult. If the image can be rendered with a right-click to view it, the browser should just render that in-line in the page, and not display a blank white space, which it does now. This is an error that simply should not occur. Note: I enabled populating of the the "Troubleshooting information" field.

This question has been asked before, tried the solutions. Adblock disabled, cookies and cache cleared, theme set to default. About:config options tweaked to defaults. Specific example: This wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_linear_equations has math equations and matrix images, which fail to render. They appear briefly, then disappear. Flash plugin disabled. Perhaps default .CSS files altered? How to check this? Note: FF menu: Tools/Page-Info/Media shows equation images fine. Also, can click on blank part of screen where image is, and right-click "view image", and math equations/matrix images render ok. But page show only blank white space. Guys, this should not be this hard, here in 2019. Default .CSS might have been changed in my desperate attempts to change horrible bright-white page to a dark-theme. FIrefox with super-bright-white page is a bad experience, but blanked-out non-display-of-inline images, of course, makes Firefox sadly useless. If I can find the solution, I will post it here. This should *not* be this difficult. If the image can be rendered with a right-click to view it, the browser should just render that in-line in the page, and not display a blank white space, which it does now. This is an error that simply should not occur. Note: I enabled populating of the the "Troubleshooting information" field.

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Firefox 52 is no longer supported. Can you try a more modern version of Firefox?

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Those are SVG images:

If you use extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) that can block content (Adblock Plus, NoScript, Disconnect, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin) always make sure such extensions do not block content.

Firefox shows the shield icon at the left end of the location/address bar in case Content Blocking is blocking content.

  • click the shield icon for more details and possibly disable the protection

You can check the Web Console about what content is blocked

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Here is a further update to this curious problem. The default value for the "about:config" parameter: "browser.display.document_color_use" is "0" (ie. a numeric zero). This value (which allows *most* webpages to render correctly with embedded images), also causes the pages to have superbright white backgrounds. And on the Wikipedia math stuff, it causes all the math/equation images to render as blank white. (see first attached screen-image). In the second attached screen-image, the only difference is that the "browser.display.document_color_use" value, in "about:config" has been set to "2". This (given the altered colors on some of the about:config "color" parms), gives a readable, dark-theme page, but also prevents many images from rendering - including that little globe in the top left corner of every wikipedia page.

So, is this a messed-up .CSS issue? If so, how to resolve? Or, is the Firefox software just broken-by-design? Or is there a fix? If someone actually knows answer, Pls advise. Thanx so much. The "We don't support, do upgrade" is a really stupid, non-answer. I will find the solution,and post it here, since this is an ongoing problem that has been around for *years*. (Google results prove this.) Bear with me, while I track down, and determine the fix...  :)

Two attached files: First shows blank white page, second shows page with colors adjusted. But that dark page will not render some images also. This is fixable problem, I am sure. All the add-ons, APB, Flash stuff, etc. is disabled. What we need is the ability to fix the superbright white page *AND* show web-page images, yes? I know this is doable. Will post result here, when I determine what the fix is.  :) Gemesys()

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This uses the default text color as set in "Options/Preferences -> General", so if you get white text then you probably have set the default text color set to white. Not all websites specify both text and background color and may assume black text on white background as the default.