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Firefox Sometimes Does Not Recognize Character Set

  • 7 cavab
  • 166 have this problem
  • 15 views
  • Last reply by Tibz

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Firefox cannot decode some characters of english text or symbols and instead of characters appear some kind of codes. Just like you would surf to chinese website without chinese character set.

Such as this here

Why is it so in Firefox? I never saw this happening in Internet Explorer.

Firefox cannot decode some characters of english text or symbols and instead of characters appear some kind of codes. Just like you would surf to chinese website without chinese character set. [http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/1638/characterseterror.jpg Such as this here] Why is it so in Firefox? I never saw this happening in Internet Explorer.

Chosen solution

Pages that use Unicode (UTF-8) display a little box with the hex code if the character can't be displayed. That allows you to look up the character in a table.

If you see such a box with hex code in it then that means that Firefox can't map a character to a specific font and you have to install a font that covers the affected characters.

In your case you are lacking font support and fonts if it happens on sites that use CJK.
You will see something similar on Windows XP if you visit pages that use complex scripts (e.g. Indic and Arabic).
Windows XP only has very basic language support installed by default.
There are a lot of languages on the world and there are always languages that may need special fonts.
You most likely can't read them, so it is your choice if you want to install a font for such pages or just accept the little squares with the hex code.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Multilingual_Plane


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All Replies (7)

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Do you have East Asian language support installed?


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- [ Translate this page ]
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Modified by cor-el

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No i don't have. I don't surf East Asian websites so i don't need this installed.

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If you do not have East Asian language support installed and also do not want to install it then you will have accept seeing hex boxes for pages and text that contain CJK characters.

Windows XP doesn't have that support installed by default (Vista and Windows 7 do).

You can still try to copy and paste such characters in Google Translate to see what the text means.

http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=en&langpair=auto|en#auto|en|

Modified by cor-el

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Are you sure that by installing East Asian language support will solve the problem?

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Seçilmiş Həll

Pages that use Unicode (UTF-8) display a little box with the hex code if the character can't be displayed. That allows you to look up the character in a table.

If you see such a box with hex code in it then that means that Firefox can't map a character to a specific font and you have to install a font that covers the affected characters.

In your case you are lacking font support and fonts if it happens on sites that use CJK.
You will see something similar on Windows XP if you visit pages that use complex scripts (e.g. Indic and Arabic).
Windows XP only has very basic language support installed by default.
There are a lot of languages on the world and there are always languages that may need special fonts.
You most likely can't read them, so it is your choice if you want to install a font for such pages or just accept the little squares with the hex code.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Multilingual_Plane


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I have this problem with FF4 however its on English sites. I found out its the hardware acceleration. Turn it off in Tools-->Advanced-->General and uncheck Use hardware acceleration when available. If someones got a fix for that I'd like to use my hw acceleration if possible.