Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
way. This doesn't seem to happen in any other application. What happens
is text is displayed overlapping on other text--here is a screenshot to
better explain this:

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...trendering.jpg

That's actually a fairly readable example. I've looked in Firefox's font
options and don't see anything out of the ordinary. I also don't think
XP is causing the problem since this doesn't happen with other browsers
or any other applications. Though I'm willing to check or change
whatever someone might recommend to solve this.

I've also tried uninstalling and then reinstalling with no extensions,
but that had no effect. This problem happens on many different sites,
sometimes affecting only small parts of the page, sometimes nearly
everything. And it also doesn't happen at all on many sites.

Anyone have any ideas?

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

Todd Brassman wrote:

> I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
> started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
> way. This doesn't seem to happen in any other application. What happens
> is text is displayed overlapping on other text--here is a screenshot to
> better explain this:
>
> http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...trendering.jpg
>
> That's actually a fairly readable example. I've looked in Firefox's font
> options and don't see anything out of the ordinary. I also don't think
> XP is causing the problem since this doesn't happen with other browsers
> or any other applications. Though I'm willing to check or change
> whatever someone might recommend to solve this.
>
> I've also tried uninstalling and then reinstalling with no extensions,
> but that had no effect. This problem happens on many different sites,
> sometimes affecting only small parts of the page, sometimes nearly
> everything. And it also doesn't happen at all on many sites.
>
> Anyone have any ideas?
stop uninstalling and reinstalling. All your settings, prefs,
bookmarks, etc, are stored in an area called your FF profile. When
you uninstall, all you're doing is removing the program. The profile
is not touched, and your problem is within your profile.

Adjust your font to a smaller size.

Or, use the text zoom under View

--
You Know You're Getting Even Older When . . . you're on vacation, and
your energy runs out before your money does.

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

Todd Brassman wrote:

> I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
> started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
> way. This doesn't seem to happen in any other application. What happens
> is text is displayed overlapping on other text--here is a screenshot to
> better explain this:
>
> http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...trendering.jpg
>
> That's actually a fairly readable example. I've looked in Firefox's font
> options and don't see anything out of the ordinary. I also don't think
> XP is causing the problem since this doesn't happen with other browsers
> or any other applications. Though I'm willing to check or change
> whatever someone might recommend to solve this.
>
> I've also tried uninstalling and then reinstalling with no extensions,
> but that had no effect. This problem happens on many different sites,
> sometimes affecting only small parts of the page, sometimes nearly
> everything. And it also doesn't happen at all on many sites.
>
> Anyone have any ideas?
stop uninstalling and reinstalling. All your settings, prefs,
bookmarks, etc, are stored in an area called your FF profile. When
you uninstall, all you're doing is removing the program. The profile
is not touched, and your problem is within your profile.

Adjust your font to a smaller size.

Or, use the text zoom under View

--
You Know You're Getting Even Older When . . . you're on vacation, and
your energy runs out before your money does.

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

*gwtc* wrote on 12.07.06 00:50:
> Todd Brassman wrote:
>
>> I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
>> started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
>> way. [..snip..]

> stop uninstalling and reinstalling. All your settings, prefs,
> bookmarks, etc, are stored in an area called your FF profile. When
> you uninstall, all you're doing is removing the program. The profile
> is not touched, and your problem is within your profile.
>
> Adjust your font to a smaller size.
>
> Or, use the text zoom under View

IMHO this could be an issue of badly written websites too.
Sometimes i have problems like this; and usually they depend
on faulty HTML- or CSS-coding. Often the same site looks ok
in IE - simply because IE ignores lots of formatting-faults.

cu, M

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

*gwtc* wrote on 12.07.06 00:50:
> Todd Brassman wrote:
>
>> I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
>> started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
>> way. [..snip..]

> stop uninstalling and reinstalling. All your settings, prefs,
> bookmarks, etc, are stored in an area called your FF profile. When
> you uninstall, all you're doing is removing the program. The profile
> is not touched, and your problem is within your profile.
>
> Adjust your font to a smaller size.
>
> Or, use the text zoom under View

IMHO this could be an issue of badly written websites too.
Sometimes i have problems like this; and usually they depend
on faulty HTML- or CSS-coding. Often the same site looks ok
in IE - simply because IE ignores lots of formatting-faults.

cu, M

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:20:40 GMT, Todd Brassman <todd_brassman@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
> started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
> way. This doesn't seem to happen in any other application. What happens
> is text is displayed overlapping on other text--here is a screenshot to
> better explain this:
>
> http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...trendering.jpg
>
> That's actually a fairly readable example. I've looked in Firefox's font
> options and don't see anything out of the ordinary. I also don't think
> XP is causing the problem since this doesn't happen with other browsers
> or any other applications. Though I'm willing to check or change
> whatever someone might recommend to solve this.

I've had this problem with Firefox ever since it was called Firebird, back
around version 0.6. I've found a few things that make it more likely to
happen, but nothing seems to totally eliminate the problem on any computer
I've tried.

Choosing a larger than default font size, or setting a minimum font size,
in the options greatly increases the chance that this will happen.
Unfortunately, not everyone is gifted with perfect eyesight, and therefor
must use either large fonts or set a minimum size to read web pages at all.

This can happen if your system is running low on memory. In that case,
other applications will usually start to act up as well.

Some page are designed so badly that it actually happens in other browsers
too, but that is not too common.

This only seems to happen on pages where css or style sheets are used. I
suspect that Firefox tries too hard to position text and images according
to what the page designer wanted, but this fails when the end user's
monitor is set to a different resolution or font size. I get text
overlapping text and images on every system I use with every version of
Firefox. It's not usually a big problem, but I do run into pages that are
totally unreadable from time to time.

Going to View | Page Style and selecting no style or a different style can
sometimes allow an unreadable overlapping page to render in a sloppy but
readable way.

Temporarily reducing the font size with Ctrl+- can sometimes help, but you
may need to use a magnifying lens when you reduce it to a size that works.

Switching to the next higher screen resolution and stretching the browser
to the new size will often make it work, assuming the resulting text size
is still readable.

Making sure your browser is stretched to cover the full width of your
display can sometimes help.

I just keep hoping that this on-going rendering problem can be fixed before
Firefox 2.0 comes out. One suggestion I have for the developers would be a
preference toggle that could favor one of two settings.

1. Try to render things in author-specified positions, as it
seems to do now, not really caring if it forces text and
images to overlap.

2. Float page elements as needed in order to guarantee that
nothing can ever overlap. This could result in bad spacing
in tables and other formatting issues, but would never
generate elements that were unreadable due to overlapping.

Most people, especially those with high-resolution screens and small fonts,
would probably stick with option 1. Pages would look as the creator
intended on such systems, and overlapping would be rare in those
circumstances.

Those with lower resolution screens, like 800x600 or less, or who need to
use large fonts would greatly benefit from option two. It would insure that
everything was readable, even if it wasn't always placed as the page
creator intended.

I realize that deciding how to render webpages can be rough. I'm almost
amazed that browsers even work at all with all the bad html, css and
scripts that are out there. The programmer that ultimately figures this out
is going to make quite a few people very happy.
--
FoxWolfie

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:20:40 GMT, Todd Brassman <todd_brassman@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
> started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
> way. This doesn't seem to happen in any other application. What happens
> is text is displayed overlapping on other text--here is a screenshot to
> better explain this:
>
> http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...trendering.jpg
>
> That's actually a fairly readable example. I've looked in Firefox's font
> options and don't see anything out of the ordinary. I also don't think
> XP is causing the problem since this doesn't happen with other browsers
> or any other applications. Though I'm willing to check or change
> whatever someone might recommend to solve this.

I've had this problem with Firefox ever since it was called Firebird, back
around version 0.6. I've found a few things that make it more likely to
happen, but nothing seems to totally eliminate the problem on any computer
I've tried.

Choosing a larger than default font size, or setting a minimum font size,
in the options greatly increases the chance that this will happen.
Unfortunately, not everyone is gifted with perfect eyesight, and therefor
must use either large fonts or set a minimum size to read web pages at all.

This can happen if your system is running low on memory. In that case,
other applications will usually start to act up as well.

Some page are designed so badly that it actually happens in other browsers
too, but that is not too common.

This only seems to happen on pages where css or style sheets are used. I
suspect that Firefox tries too hard to position text and images according
to what the page designer wanted, but this fails when the end user's
monitor is set to a different resolution or font size. I get text
overlapping text and images on every system I use with every version of
Firefox. It's not usually a big problem, but I do run into pages that are
totally unreadable from time to time.

Going to View | Page Style and selecting no style or a different style can
sometimes allow an unreadable overlapping page to render in a sloppy but
readable way.

Temporarily reducing the font size with Ctrl+- can sometimes help, but you
may need to use a magnifying lens when you reduce it to a size that works.

Switching to the next higher screen resolution and stretching the browser
to the new size will often make it work, assuming the resulting text size
is still readable.

Making sure your browser is stretched to cover the full width of your
display can sometimes help.

I just keep hoping that this on-going rendering problem can be fixed before
Firefox 2.0 comes out. One suggestion I have for the developers would be a
preference toggle that could favor one of two settings.

1. Try to render things in author-specified positions, as it
seems to do now, not really caring if it forces text and
images to overlap.

2. Float page elements as needed in order to guarantee that
nothing can ever overlap. This could result in bad spacing
in tables and other formatting issues, but would never
generate elements that were unreadable due to overlapping.

Most people, especially those with high-resolution screens and small fonts,
would probably stick with option 1. Pages would look as the creator
intended on such systems, and overlapping would be rare in those
circumstances.

Those with lower resolution screens, like 800x600 or less, or who need to
use large fonts would greatly benefit from option two. It would insure that
everything was readable, even if it wasn't always placed as the page
creator intended.

I realize that deciding how to render webpages can be rough. I'm almost
amazed that browsers even work at all with all the bad html, css and
scripts that are out there. The programmer that ultimately figures this out
is going to make quite a few people very happy.
--
FoxWolfie

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

Miller wrote:
> *gwtc* wrote on 12.07.06 00:50:
>
>>Todd Brassman wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
>>>started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
>>>way. [..snip..]
>
>
>>stop uninstalling and reinstalling. All your settings, prefs,
>>bookmarks, etc, are stored in an area called your FF profile. When
>>you uninstall, all you're doing is removing the program. The profile
>>is not touched, and your problem is within your profile.
>>
>>Adjust your font to a smaller size.
>>
>>Or, use the text zoom under View
>
>
> IMHO this could be an issue of badly written websites too.
> Sometimes i have problems like this; and usually they depend
> on faulty HTML- or CSS-coding. Often the same site looks ok
> in IE - simply because IE ignores lots of formatting-faults.
>
> cu, M
very, very true!

--
You Know You're Getting Even Older When . . . you're on vacation, and
your energy runs out before your money does.

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

Miller wrote:
> *gwtc* wrote on 12.07.06 00:50:
>
>>Todd Brassman wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP. Quite suddenly Firefox has
>>>started rendering text on many webpages almost in an almost unreadable
>>>way. [..snip..]
>
>
>>stop uninstalling and reinstalling. All your settings, prefs,
>>bookmarks, etc, are stored in an area called your FF profile. When
>>you uninstall, all you're doing is removing the program. The profile
>>is not touched, and your problem is within your profile.
>>
>>Adjust your font to a smaller size.
>>
>>Or, use the text zoom under View
>
>
> IMHO this could be an issue of badly written websites too.
> Sometimes i have problems like this; and usually they depend
> on faulty HTML- or CSS-coding. Often the same site looks ok
> in IE - simply because IE ignores lots of formatting-faults.
>
> cu, M
very, very true!

--
You Know You're Getting Even Older When . . . you're on vacation, and
your energy runs out before your money does.

Re: Firefox displaying weird text formatting
 

> Anyone have any ideas?

Probably the Fiona Apple stuff playing in the background.