strange characters display instead of letters

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juicenew
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strange characters display instead of letters

Post by juicenew »

If there is anyway to fix the following, please help!

I recently installed Firefox 3 and have noticed that there are some characters that are replaced by tiny boxes with 4 letters or numbers in them. This not only happens with web pages, but even in about:config (while looking at fonts). Is there a remedy for this, and if so, could someone please tell me?

Thanks! :)
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m1scha.m
Posts: 1471
Joined: October 18th, 2007, 5:04 pm

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by m1scha.m »

An example would have been nice. From memory it is a language for which your computer isn't setup to handle, for example this is the Wikipedia page for Armenia (being one I looked at recently) which does the same for me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia

Copy and paste as an example from that page: Armenia (Armenian: Հայաստան Hayastan), officially in English the Republic of Armenia.
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Gingerbread Man
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Joined: January 30th, 2007, 10:55 am

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by Gingerbread Man »

  1. Install all language support in Windows. See Enabling International Support in Windows XP.
  2. In Firefox, go to View > Character Encoding > Auto-detect > Universal.
  3. Then go to Tools > Options > Content. Under "Fonts & Colors", click Advanced.
  4. Next to "Default character encoding", choose Western (ISO-8859-1)
juicenew
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Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by juicenew »

Ok, I switched all the character encoding settings and it is still doing it. This time I'm enclosing a screenshot of it just in case.

Image
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m1scha.m
Posts: 1471
Joined: October 18th, 2007, 5:04 pm

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by m1scha.m »

I would imagine it would depend on which language you had Firefox set to display, as long as you had also changed the language under Win2k's regional settings to include that language.
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Gingerbread Man
Posts: 7735
Joined: January 30th, 2007, 10:55 am

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by Gingerbread Man »

Please include a link to the page with the problem.
Which OS are you using? Your user agent first said Windows XP, now Windows 2000. If the latter is the case, see this article instead: Enabling International Support in Windows 2000. Check everything in the section titled "Language settings for the system".
Tony Soprano
Guest

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by Tony Soprano »

Hi, I'm pretty sure it's a bug in Firefox 3. Because i have exactly the same problem since ever i updated to 3.0.
With Firefox 2.x everything worked fine. Since ever after the update i see this lil number codes on a lot of pages instead the correct characters. It's even on MySpace or in WikiPedia. Whenever not common characters are used,then it will display the codes. It's really annoying, I tried to change the language settings and everything but nope. I'm already thinking about downgrading to FireFox 2.x. again,cause it worked fine there. :/
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Gingerbread Man
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Joined: January 30th, 2007, 10:55 am

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by Gingerbread Man »

Tony Soprano wrote:Hi, I'm pretty sure it's a bug in Firefox 3.

I doubt that. The numbers represent Unicode characters; they're displayed when the language in question is not supported by the operating system. In the above example, U+0540 is "Armenian capital letter Ho".

I already posted the solution above twice: install language support in Windows and adjust the character encoding in Firefox. If it still doesn't work, then post the exact link where it happens.
moonisharsh
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Joined: June 28th, 2008, 9:15 pm
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Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by moonisharsh »

Well, still use FF2,but will install FF3 soon. Hope it is good to use.
Guest
Guest

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by Guest »

I already installed the languages in Win Xp. And Firefox is set to Western (ISO-8859-1).
And well...why did it work in Firefox 2.x and after the Update it dont work anymore?

Examples :
http://www.myspace.com/muffin_lovez_cookies
(in the screenname on the sides of MUFFIN)-> ♡ℓa MuFF!N☮♡ツ

http://www.823kan.com/
(page is full of this codes)
motorbikematt
Posts: 7
Joined: June 29th, 2008, 6:53 am

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by motorbikematt »

Gingerbread Guy wrote:
Tony Soprano wrote:Hi, I'm pretty sure it's a bug in Firefox 3.

I doubt that.


Actually, I do think it is a bug. One should not have to install the Language support pack for characters that were viewable in previous versions of the same browser, or in all other browsers. This is a problem that has been officially noticed before:

https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=40944

And others across the web have posted questions about it as well:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ssegraves/2590139237/
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla. ... e?lnk=raot

Moreover, I did follow your suggestion, have changed the character encoding to all UTF and ISO variants, and none of them resolved the problem.

To see a real world webpage with the problem:

https://ifmpmsfc11.ifmp.nasa.gov/ROSII/ ... ppointment

However, it is really simple enough to replicate it right here:

For instance, take the word résumé. On some sites, it shows up like: r�sum�.

That very sentence in my editor window using FF3 it appears like this:
Image

What do you see?
motorbikematt
Posts: 7
Joined: June 29th, 2008, 6:53 am

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by motorbikematt »

motorbikematt wrote:However, it is really simple enough to replicate it right here:

For instance, take the word résumé. On some sites, it shows up like: r�sum�.

That very sentence in my editor window using FF3 it appears like this:
Image


OKAY... now I am even more confused:

A screencap of this post in IE7 produced this result:

Image

However, the problem is still reproducible by viewing this site in both IE7 and FF3

https://ifmpmsfc11.ifmp.nasa.gov/ROSII/ ... ppointment

Strange!
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trolly
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Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by trolly »

The page does not send a character encoding so the browser uses the set default encoding which is UTF-8 (for me). The page uses actually ISO-8859-1 so the browser will display it wrong because it does not know which encoding is really used.
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Tony Soprano
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Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by Tony Soprano »

[quote="motorbikematt"

For instance, take the word résumé. On some sites, it shows up like: r�sum�.

That very sentence in my editor window using FF3 it appears like this:
Image

What do you see?[/quote]

I see it the same way as shown in the screenshot.

How did you see the muffin-part i posted above? (accidently as Guest)

♡ℓa MuFF!N☮♡ツ

How can it not be a bug if it worked fine in previous versions?
People judge 2 easy saying "Install this and that it must be YOU computer etc." when absolutely nothing has changed but the Update from 2.x to 3.0.
motorbikematt
Posts: 7
Joined: June 29th, 2008, 6:53 am

Re: strange characters display instead of letters

Post by motorbikematt »

trolly wrote:The page does not send a character encoding so the browser uses the set default encoding which is UTF-8 (for me). The page uses actually ISO-8859-1 so the browser will display it wrong because it does not know which encoding is really used.


But how does that explain the fact that I've changed the encoding and the same result exists (even on this page).

Moreover, why did it work well in FF2? What changed, and what can be done about it? Is this one of these situations where "Since the webpage author didn't follow standards, we're not going to make it work either?"
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