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Why is text on webpages sometimes displayed incorrectly?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Sometimes some of the text on a page is almost illegible. Assuming black text on a white background, some of the pixels that should be black are white instead. Most of the time if I scroll the page so the bad text is hidden and then scroll back, the text appears correctly. Sometimes the text spontaneously corrects. This started happening with Firefox version 19.0.0.

I have an LCD monitor with 1920x1080 resolution. I don't have this problem with any other program.

Sometimes some of the text on a page is almost illegible. Assuming black text on a white background, some of the pixels that should be black are white instead. Most of the time if I scroll the page so the bad text is hidden and then scroll back, the text appears correctly. Sometimes the text spontaneously corrects. This started happening with Firefox version 19.0.0. I have an LCD monitor with 1920x1080 resolution. I don't have this problem with any other program.

Chosen solution

Some font rendering issues are caused by graphics driver incompatibilities. Could you try disabling Firefox's use of hardware graphics acceleration?

You usually need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"

If you restart Firefox, is the display improved?

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Chosen Solution

Some font rendering issues are caused by graphics driver incompatibilities. Could you try disabling Firefox's use of hardware graphics acceleration?

You usually need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"

If you restart Firefox, is the display improved?

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Thanks! That fixed the problem!

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You can also try to set the gfx.content.azure.enabled pref to false or if this didn't help disable Direct2D by setting the gfx.direct2d.disabled pref to true on the about:config page and leave hardware acceleration otherwise enabled.

You can also try to uninstall Windows update KB2670838 if you have this update.