This is a follow-up and more detailed explanation as to what I am experiencing in both Firefox 4 RC1 (Windows 7 32-Bit) and Firefox 4 Beta 13pre (Windows 7 64-Bit). I have yet to try this on my Vista/Linux system. On Firefox 4 RC1 (32-Bit) with Windows Vista the page loaded fine. I’ll check later with Linux.
@jhz – you posted this comment in the prior article before I included screenshots, can you check again and let me know?
I guess it won’t help you, but the said article appears totally correct with FF4 (RC), for OS X. In 64 bit mode.
Here is the issue, any Wikipedia article that uses specials characters (usually in the first paragraph or two). While the page is loading the text is fine. But once it finishes loading the character encoding is messed up. Changing the encoding from the option in the view menu has the safe effect, while the page is reloading it is fine, but as soon as it has finished loading it is messed up. I was able to get some screenshots…
This is while the page is loading, everything renders fine:
However, once the page has loaded:
I’m running 64bit minefield on windows 7 and I’m not experiencing any problems on the wikipedia articles you talked about, so it might be a problem with your profile. Have you tried creating a new one. I also have directwrite enabled (along with all the other fancy things on the bottom of about:support). I have also set the character encoding to Unicode (UTF-8), Western (ISO-8859-1), and a few other encodings, and I do not see anything like in your screenshots. I hope this has helped you narrow your problem down a little more.
I don’t think it is profile related as I am running different profiles on the 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The 32-bit only has Nightly Tester Tools and IE Tab Plus installed.
This wikipedia page talks about special characters and changing font settings. I hope it helps you resolve your problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_characters#Displaying_special_characters
Thank you for this blog. I really enjoy reading about firefox releases, tweaks, and extensions!
Hi Guru,
Likewise as m2. Running latest x64 minefield version as well. Displays all the characters just fine during/after page loading.
That is an odd one! Can you try it by starting your profile in a safe mode
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
“Starting in Firefox 4, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode via “Help -> Restart with Add-ons disabled…”. When Firefox restarts, the Firefox Safe Mode options window will appear”
Claus V.
I confirm the correct behavior on my side : OS X 10.6, 64 bit mode, FF 4 RC.
Using windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and FF 4.0b13pre (minefield)
havent seen any problems using wikipedia or other sites using misc. character sets.