Wierd Characters in Firefox

Technical Chatter here.
Locked
User avatar
Cuda




Grunge

Posts: 5725
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:59 pm
Location: Torrance, CA

Wierd Characters in Firefox

Post by Cuda »

Certain Characters in Firefox wig out and give me these wierd characters like this:私 On my screen it looks like a box with some letters and numbers in it. Any fix for this?
Image
User avatar
DEEhunter





Posts: 897
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2005 4:04 pm
Location: 127.0.0.1
Contact:

Post by DEEhunter »

I get the same thing. On symbols like parenthesis or apostrophes it shows a little box with 4 numbers or letters.
Image

Deviantart | My City | Wmclan | Gamertag | [url=irc://irc.halomods.com/melon]#melon[/url]
User avatar
[cc]z@nd!




Literarian 500

Posts: 2297
Joined: Tue May 04, 2004 1:52 pm
Location: michigan

Post by [cc]z@nd! »

maybe see what type of encoding your firefox is currently set to? try view>character encoding.

mine's set at UTF-8 right now and everything seems fine. ASCII would also be worth a shot, although it's decreasing in popularity, so some pages might come out weird.
ASPARTAME: in your diet soda and artificial sweeteners. also, it's obviously completely safe. it's not like it will cause tumors or anything. >.>
always remember: guilty until proven innocent
User avatar
SpecOp44




Advisor Recreator Snitch! Critic

Posts: 2008
Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:34 pm
Location: The Canadarm

Post by SpecOp44 »

It only happened when FF3 came out....oddly enough.

I think it replaces characters that aren't included in your default Firefox font. Maybe it's something else...
Image
Patrickssj6




Pi Collaborator

Posts: 5426
Joined: Sat Jul 24, 2004 12:12 pm
Location: I'm a Paranoid
Contact:

Post by Patrickssj6 »

[cc]z@nd! wrote:maybe see what type of encoding your firefox is currently set to? try view>character encoding.

mine's set at UTF-8 right now and everything seems fine. ASCII would also be worth a shot, although it's decreasing in popularity, so some pages might come out weird.
Even if the website is set to Unicode...ASCII would still work just fine for normal characters as they share the same space for Latin characters. :wink:
...left for good
User avatar
Cuda




Grunge

Posts: 5725
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:59 pm
Location: Torrance, CA

Post by Cuda »

So...Any fix?
Image
User avatar
Tural




Conceptionist Acolyte Bloodhound Recreator
Socialist Connoisseur Droplet Scorched Earth
Grunge

Posts: 15628
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:44 pm
Location: Lincoln, NE
Contact:

Post by Tural »

The issue is that your computer/browser does not have the character sets necessary to display those characters. In other browsers, you'll likely see either just an empty square or no character at all, unless that browser has the characters embedded within its files, which I presume most don't. The character in your post is visible to me, because I have East Asian characters installed (An option on the XP install disc). Firefox 3 renders these characters with the numbers inside the box so you can identify which character is causing the issue, as opposed to a browser such as Firefox 2, which would just render an empty box I believe. I don't know that there's a specific fix for the browser, because it isn't a browser issue per se, but you could install the language packs on your computer through your OS disc. You'll see some issues with this on HM, because when the servers switched the character sets changed or something, and that's an issue with the site, not your browser or computer.
User avatar
THE-MASTER




Critic Trickster

Posts: 225
Joined: Mon Aug 29, 2005 10:31 am
Location: Scotland

Post by THE-MASTER »

It can also be the websites fault if they have put the wrong encoding in the meta tags. It happened on my site for a while when I was using ajax to call some script and it kept coming up with strange characters. If the content has been taken from other sites it can cause problems.

Firefox 3 usually does big black boxes with symbols when it doesn't know what to do doesn't it? This makes it more obvious than previous versions which is probably why you are noticing it more.
Now Playing:Image
Please contact me if the sig is over the limit with the title of the song, artist and album. :) Thanks!
Ace Space Race, Halo 3 player snapshot generator,Random Sig
ManBearPig_06





Posts: 57
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 5:53 pm

Re: Wierd Characters in Firefox

Post by ManBearPig_06 »

Cuda wrote:Certain Characters in Firefox wig out and give me these wierd characters like this:私 On my screen it looks like a box with some letters and numbers in it. Any fix for this?
I'm using FF2, and I see a Japanese character.
User avatar
Tural




Conceptionist Acolyte Bloodhound Recreator
Socialist Connoisseur Droplet Scorched Earth
Grunge

Posts: 15628
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:44 pm
Location: Lincoln, NE
Contact:

Post by Tural »

Did you bother reading the explanations in this post? You being able to see it contributes nothing at all, because it varies per person.
User avatar
Cuda




Grunge

Posts: 5725
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:59 pm
Location: Torrance, CA

Post by Cuda »

Thanks.
Image
Locked