Firefox ESR on Devuan has resize problems
Firefox ESR on Devuan, both 2.0 and Beowulf, has a problem involving resizing. Webpages that formally displayed fine now are too large (the indicator shows 100%, but I must reduce it to 80% to display as it did before). Other Linux distributions, for example, Linux Mint and openSUSE, do not have this problem (PaleMoon on the Devuan system does not have the problem).
The hardware is old: Intel 3rd Generation Core processor, 8 GB memory, SSD connected via USB 3.0.
The best solution might be to run both Firefox ESR and regular Firefox. I can download the latter, extract it, move the folder to the desktop, and double-click on "firefox" to start it, similar to how I run PaleMoon. Is there a way to avoid them using the same profile?
Chosen solution
The below took me days to figure out. I had a few wild goose chases.
I was running Devuan 2.0 (ASCII) which had an old Cinnamon. A few weeks ago, Firefox ESR started to act very differently than it did before. Everything was zoomed-in about 20%, even though the zoom indicator read 100%. Changing the zoom was not global, in other words, I was forced to change the zoom to 80% for each page I visited, a real PITA.
I thought my old Devuan needed to be replaced. So I wiped the drive and installed Devuan 3.0 (Beowulf). However, the same resize problem was present. cor-el in Mozilla forums suggested that I modify layout.css.devPixelsPerPx. Changing layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 0.0 made things better, but still not back to what it was before.
I used spare drives to install a few different distributions including Devuan and Linux Mint (regular and LMDE). All of the Cinnamons had the same problem. Then I had an epiphany. I changed LargeText to false -- did I neglect to mention that I always set LargeText to true? -- and Firefox returned to normal, after a restart of it.
So the latest versions of Firefox, both regular and ESR, have an interaction problem with Cinnamon's LargeText setting which did not exist before. I'm not going to get involved in fingerpointing, but I will recommend that users not use LargeText in Cinnamon and set each font manually. If I was getting paid for this, I'd investigate if LargeText in GNOME has the same problem (I'll bet it does).
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (6)
Update: I created a Sparky Linux system and its Firefox had the same problem. So it's either something Debian did or something in Firefox ESR.
Maybe check layout.css.devPixelsPerPx on the about:config page.
@cor-el
Yeah, that's the solution. It was set at -1.0. I set it to 0.0 and things look normal. I assume the -1.0 value was set by Debian, as it was not in bold font.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Modified by pccobbler
-1.0 is the default value for this pref meaning that the OS is asked for the DPI setting, so if you change the DPI setting on the OS then Firefox automatically applies it.
@cor-el
Okay, you've confused me. One thing I always do on a Cinnamon system is set fonts to large. It's never caused a problem before and I've been using Linux for maybe ten years. Something is different on recent Debian-based systems.
Chosen Solution
The below took me days to figure out. I had a few wild goose chases.
I was running Devuan 2.0 (ASCII) which had an old Cinnamon. A few weeks ago, Firefox ESR started to act very differently than it did before. Everything was zoomed-in about 20%, even though the zoom indicator read 100%. Changing the zoom was not global, in other words, I was forced to change the zoom to 80% for each page I visited, a real PITA.
I thought my old Devuan needed to be replaced. So I wiped the drive and installed Devuan 3.0 (Beowulf). However, the same resize problem was present. cor-el in Mozilla forums suggested that I modify layout.css.devPixelsPerPx. Changing layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 0.0 made things better, but still not back to what it was before.
I used spare drives to install a few different distributions including Devuan and Linux Mint (regular and LMDE). All of the Cinnamons had the same problem. Then I had an epiphany. I changed LargeText to false -- did I neglect to mention that I always set LargeText to true? -- and Firefox returned to normal, after a restart of it.
So the latest versions of Firefox, both regular and ESR, have an interaction problem with Cinnamon's LargeText setting which did not exist before. I'm not going to get involved in fingerpointing, but I will recommend that users not use LargeText in Cinnamon and set each font manually. If I was getting paid for this, I'd investigate if LargeText in GNOME has the same problem (I'll bet it does).
Modified by pccobbler