Could you give an example of where you see this? It would help in understanding what kind of elements they are (regular links, image links, form buttons, custom fonts, etc.)?

It might also help to post a screen shot (no confidential information, please). This article has tips on that: How do I create a screenshot of my problem?

One site where I experience this problem is yahoo mail. I can't get a screen shot from it using the instructions Mozilla provided. It shows all the incoming emails but to the left of each where there is usually 1 box to check there are two rectangles with the squiggly lines, and at the top of that column where there is usually one box that if checked cause all the emails to be highlighted- instead there are two of the rectangles. On another website for an SEO firm in the upper right hand corner there are usually the words Sign In but instead FireFox shows a rectangle tangle with squiggly lines.

Some users see tall rectangles in place of normal icons, which have two lines of two characters each. These indicate that Firefox couldn't use the font the site specified, and couldn't find a match for it in a different font. This can occur when you override the page's fonts in the Options. I have attached a screen shot showing where that is changed. Does that make any difference?

I figured out how to get a screen shot- attached it

If see little boxes that show the hex code instead of the icons then those missing icons are actually supplied by a font that is downloaded from the server (@font-face).

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 also 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).

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

Thank you everyone- it worked. Would never have guessed. Appreciate the help!