494662 - Head font glyphs render as garbage characters while body fonts render normally

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Morton A. Goldberg, DVM]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1pre) Gecko/20090523 Shiretoko/3.5pre (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1pre) Gecko/20090523 Shiretoko/3.5pre (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

On certain websites, head font glyphs render as meaningless garbage characters while body font glyphs render normally. On affected sites, this bug is 100% reproducible. It affects both the 3.5 (1.9.1) and 3.6 (1.9.2) forks, but only under Windows. I have used the 3.6 nightlies (though not 3.5) as well as the latest public 3.0 release under Kubuntu Linux, and this problem has not occurred. Affected websites render normally in both the 3.5 and 3.6 nightlies when using the IE Tab extension, as well as in Google Chrome 2.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install the IE Tab extension if it is not already installed.
2. Open WorldNetDaily.com in either of the FF nightlies (3.5 "Shiretoko" or 3.6 "Minefield") using Gecko.
3. Observe the font glyphs.
4. Click the IE Tab icon in the status bar to change rendering engines.
5. Observe the font glyphs again.
Actual Results:  
Using Gecko, the head font glyphs are rendered incorrectly --- all of them in 3.5; larger sizes only in 3.6 (as per the accompanying screenshots). Using IE Tab or viewing the page in Google Chrome, all font glyphs display properly.

Expected Results:  
All font glyphs should display properly.

To see captioned screenshots illustrating the problem, as well as the same page rendering normally with IE Tab and Google Chrome, go here: <http://picasaweb.google.com/inoculate128/MozillaOrgScreenshots?feat=directlink>

Reducing the font size several steps (Control-Minus) causes the fonts to render normally, but far too small. Particularly in the 3.5 nightlies, it is necessary to reduce the font size to such a degree that the page becomes completely unreadable. In the case of the 3.6 nightlies, less reduction is necessary --- typically 3 steps.

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

This bug was reported using Firefox 3.0 or older, which is no longer supported. The bug has also not been changed in over 500 days and is still in UNCO.
Reporter, please retest this bug in Firefox 3.6.10 or later using a fresh profile, http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/managing+profiles. If you still see this problem, please update the bug. If you no longer see the bug, please set the resolution to RESOLVED, WORKSFORME.

This is a mass search of unconfirmed bugs that have no activity on them, so if you feel a bug was marked in error, just remove the CLOSEME comment in the whiteboard within the next month.

Comment 2

[Morton A. Goldberg, DVM]

Using 4.0b8 [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b8pre) Gecko/20101107 Firefox/4.0b8pre] all font glyphs display properly. Marking bug RESOLVED, WORKSFORME.