linux.com isn't rendering properly with Firefox

dugan · 05-18-2008, 03:11 PM

When I surf linux.com in Firefox, it's rendered in TINY (and apparently unhinted) fonts. Pressing CTRL-+ to increase the font size doesn't do so: it only increases the size of the CSS boxes. The problem goes away if I uncheck "allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above." I have a full selection of fonts installed, including the Microsoft web fonts. It happens with Firefox 2.0.0.14, 3.0b5, and 3.0rc1.

Anyone else having this problem?

adriv · 05-18-2008, 04:01 PM

I've had it too. Unchecked that box (allow pages etc...) and everything is fine now.
On Akregator (I have Linux.com in my feeds) it's even worse, hardly readable.

T3slider · 05-18-2008, 04:23 PM

See this thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...n-12.1-640468/

dugan · 05-18-2008, 04:51 PM

I've made every change suggested in that thread, reverted back from them (specifically to see if they caused the problem with Linux.com's font rendering), then made the changes again. At no point did the problem go away. I also contributed to that thread. What, specifically, are you pointing out?

titopoquito · 05-18-2008, 04:58 PM

Maybe nothing special, only that linux.com probably renders fine for T3slider with the three LCD packages. The same is true for me (Slackware 12.1 with the three packages I compiled myself).

I wonder if it's due to your font selection or the way you did it. You mentioned the Liberation fonts in the linked thread, and I use them myself (with very nice rendering), but I didn't do any changes to /etc/fonts/* AFAIR.

dugan · 05-18-2008, 05:01 PM

Could you and T3slider please confirm that you have "allow pages to choose their own fonts" checked? I only see the problem with this option on.

I also wondered if my font customization screwed something up. But I already tried deleting all the fonts I installed, removing my custom fontconfig file, and replacing Daedra's packages with Pat's. It didn't help.

T3slider · 05-18-2008, 05:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

I've made every change suggested in that thread, reverted back from them (specifically to see if they caused the problem with Linux.com's font rendering), then made the changes again. At no point did the problem go away. I also contributed to that thread. What, specifically, are you pointing out?

Sorry, I obviously wasn't paying enough attention (I didn't check to see if you posted in the thread) and just assumed it was yet another newbie question without having followed that thread. My fault -- sorry about that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Could you and T3slider please confirm that you have "allow pages to choose their own fonts" checked? I only see the problem with this option on.

I also wondered if my font customization screwed something up. But I already tried deleting all the fonts I installed, removing my custom fontconfig file, and replacing Daedra's packages with Pat's. It didn't help.

I'm still using 12.0, so I can't help (but yes, web pages are allowed to choose their own fonts). I am personally using Windows fonts "borrowed" from my Windows installation -- I have them located in a directory in my $HOME folder (actually in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts, so they're being used for my WINE installation) and I have symlinks for each font in that directory in /usr/share/fonts/TTF (which is specified in xorg.conf). It's not the most elegant solution, but I have typical Windows-style fonts in Firefox (and everything else). I'm not sure of the legality of the solution though (I do have a Windows installation, but I'm using the fonts in a non-Windows setup) so I wouldn't recommend it. Screenshots to see how it looks (probably not as good as Daedra's, but I'm not picky):
http://i30.tinypic.com/e9uic7.png
http://i28.tinypic.com/2hgqyds.png

I don't know if that'll work in 12.1 or not (haven't bothered upgrading yet). Other posts seem to suggest it will not -- but I'm not 100% positive.

shadowsnipes · 05-18-2008, 05:54 PM

I've had similar problems with yahoo's webmail page. If you let the site choose its own fonts sometimes it gives you crap. One solution that will still let web sites choose their own fonts is to create a custom css style for that site. I recommend using the Stylish addon to help with this.

Here is an example Stylish css style I made for yahoo's page. It only fixes the particular elements that really bothered me. More should be added for if you want all of the text to look good.

Code:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("mail.yahoo.com")
{
  li,
  tr.msgnew,
  tr.msgold {font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif;font-size:94%;}
}

The real important part for this instance is the percentage as the main problem I had was the font size in relation to their containing element.

marnold · 05-18-2008, 05:59 PM

Works for me with the Windows TTFs installed. I also nuked 60-liberation.conf from /etc/fonts/conf.d. It makes zero sense to me to set up font renderer deliberately to use a font other than the one I want.

titopoquito · 05-18-2008, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Could you and T3slider please confirm that you have "allow pages to choose their own fonts" checked? I only see the problem with this option on.

Hm ......... yes, you're right. It was a busy day for me and it's late here

I *thought* I had enabled that option but actually I haven't.

dugan · 05-18-2008, 06:06 PM

There are no ethical problems with installing Microsoft's web fonts. My research tells me that we're within our rights to download and use them. I'm sure your research will agree.

Honestly, I can't remember if Slackware 12 gave me this problem. Slackware 12.1 definitely does.

For those posting "works for me" messages: when you do so, please specify a) the version of Slackware you're running, and b) whether you're allowing webpages to choose their own fonts. (Well, marnold?)

EDIT: I should have searched

. No working solutions are presented in the thread below, but it's a discussion on the same topic.

Strange rendering of Linux.com Slackware 12.1

Can I get a mod to merge these two threads please?

dugan · 05-24-2008, 05:59 PM

I FIXED IT!!!!!!!

I symlinked /etc/fonts/conf.avail/70-no-bitmaps.conf to /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf, then ran fc-cache -f -v. Now Firefox is rendering both Linux.com and Yahoo.com properly.

Obviously, this will cause you problems if you do need Bitmap fonts (like, say, if you run Fluxbox and your favorite themes use Artwiz fonts), but I don't. So for me, problems solved.

shadowsnipes · 05-24-2008, 09:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marnold

Works for me with the Windows TTFs installed. I also nuked 60-liberation.conf from /etc/fonts/conf.d. It makes zero sense to me to set up font renderer deliberately to use a font other than the one I want.

Yes, this works for me on Slackware 12.1. On Slackware 12.0 these web pages looked fine for me with M$ TTFs installed. However, for Slackware 12.1 the Liberation Fonts will be used instead by default.

Quote:

Originally Posted by /etc/fonts/conf.avail/60-liberation.conf

The solution, as marnold mentioned, is to (as root) simply remove the symlink at /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-liberation.conf and then run fc-cache -f. This only works if you have the M$ TTFs installed.

Otherwise, custom css or turning off bitmaps (as dugan mentioned) appear to be other solutions.

dugan · 05-25-2008, 12:03 AM

Shadowsnipes, you're absolutely right. I wonder why the replacing the Microsoft core fonts with Liberation fonts (which is what 60-liberation.conf does) would be the cause of the problem, considering that the Liberation fonts are fully hinted, scalable outline fonts.

For that matter, I wonder why disabling bitmap fonts would solve the problem.