1907309 - Stop honouring legacy Windows 7 or earlier customized font sizes and only use Windows 10+ text size slider information (was: Addons tab text looks so small)

Status: NEW

(Core :: Widget: Win32, defect, P3)

Description

[Semo]

Attachment: screenshot.png

Steps to reproduce:

When i intalled the firefox and added an extension

Actual results:

Added addons page looked too small that i cant even read what is says.
Also the bookmarks are small too.

Expected results:

I should read what is says on the new addon and bookmarks.

Comment 1

[Frederik Braun [:freddy]]

Me on Reddit:
Sorry you are still seeing this issue!
It might be connected to custom fonts and Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) Strict mode. If setting ETP to normal settings, does the issue persist?

If the ETP toggle fixes this, then I have a couple of font-related questions:

• Please go to Firefox Preferences (`about:preferences#general) and scroll to the Fonts section. Does the "Default Font" dropdown show a font like "Default (Times)? Which is your default font?
• Did you set a custom default font in Firefox?
• If this is on Windows: What is your default font in Windows called? Go to Windows Settings (Windows+i), click "Personalization", select "Fonts", please supply the font name.
• Which Firefox release channel are you on?
• Did this show up based on an update (OK if you can't tell)

Happy to continue this in bugzilla, where I will be able to pay a bit more attention :-)

The reporter, on Reddit:

• I didnt had any custom fonts i just installed the firefox.
• ETP was on standart.
  For the questions
• Fonts section is Default font Default (Times New Roman) size 16.
• No i dont have a custom font.
• When i join the Fonts section there is no font.
• Firefox 128.
• No i just installed the firefox.

Comment 2

[Semo]

I fixed it it may be sound absurd but i just increase the font and decrease it to normal size and bam problem solved thanks everyone to trying to help me.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

I was too slow writing a comment here - glad to hear the reporter figured it out.

The screenshot in reddit is from the "new" Windows settings. The font size we use is based on the "old" Windows defaults which are per-element (so you can configure e.g. title bars and message box contents differently). See also e.g. bug 1760250 comment 5. On Windows 11, MS have removed the user interface mechanisms for changing those, but it doesn't surprise me that changing the font size to something else and then back has reset any changes to it.

The fact that settings work would make sense as they hardcode a base font size of 15px.

Emilio/Dão, is there a way to stop doing this at the widget layer and/or rely on the overall Windows font size in a way that doesn't lead to issues like this, at least on Win11 / Win10-without-user-customization-of-individual-font-sizes? (ie is there a way to get the value of the "slider" in the win11 settings instead of the "old" WindowMetrics registry entries)

Comment 4

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

is there a way to get the value of the "slider" in the win11 settings instead of the "old" WindowMetrics registry entries

Well, yes, but we apply that as an extra scale factor already (here).

We un-apply that scale factor for system fonts here because it's supposed to be included.

It seems the Windows installation in comment 2 got into a weird state where the pixels windows returned us were not physical / did not include the text scale factor? So, tldr: Yes, we could ignore that, or apply a minimum size perhaps? We apply a 12px minimum size for some systems here...

Does that answer your question?

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio) from comment #4)

is there a way to get the value of the "slider" in the win11 settings instead of the "old" WindowMetrics registry entries

Well, yes, but we apply that as an extra scale factor already (here).

I'm a bit confused - that says "os-zoom", but the relevant setting I was aware of was the text size slider in Win11, which is separate from the scale factor (DPI / zoom) that Win11 also exposes. Which of them is this talking about? Is the name "os-zoom" but it's really talking about the text size OS control? 🫠

We un-apply that scale factor for system fonts here because it's supposed to be included.

It seems the Windows installation in comment 2 got into a weird state where the pixels windows returned us were not physical / did not include the text scale factor? So, tldr: Yes, we could ignore that, or apply a minimum size perhaps? We apply a 12px minimum size for some systems here...

Does that answer your question?

Sort of. Obviously the user problem to solve here is avoiding people ending up with text that is too huge or too tiny. The constraint is that we do want to honour user OS settings around text size. I'm effectively asking if there's a better way to thread that needle on Windows 11 (and 10-ish).

As an uninformed counter-proposal: could we take the 11px/12px default size and multiply that with the text scale factor, and ignore the WindowsMetrics thingy entirely, given that MS have hidden it? What would that break? If the answer is "only users who have somehow used the registry to change the WindowMetrics setting separately from the Windows 'public' settings", do we care about that?

Comment 6

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

I'm a bit confused - that says "os-zoom", but the relevant setting I was aware of was the text size slider in Win11, which is separate from the scale factor (DPI / zoom) that Win11 also exposes. Which of them is this talking about? Is the name "os-zoom" but it's really talking about the text size OS control? 🫠

os-zoom in this case is the text size in windows settings... The DPI scale factor is always accounted for unconditionally.

As an uninformed counter-proposal: could we take the 11px/12px default size and multiply that with the text scale factor, and ignore the WindowsMetrics thingy entirely, given that MS have hidden it? What would that break? If the answer is "only users who have somehow used the registry to change the WindowMetrics setting separately from the Windows 'public' settings", do we care about that?

Are we sure the default everywhere is 11/12px? Or does it depend on locale or something else? We'd have to ask someone more familiar with these windows internals to confirm that's the case.

Multiplying by the text scale factor would double-apply it as per my links above, but other than that... Yeah, perhaps we can just fix the font size...

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

We should make sure to have a pref for this so we can revert in case of fallout.