That issue can be caused by a problem with the font that is used for the Windows Title bar.

You can check core fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman in "Control Panel > Fonts" and make sure that they are not missing or corrupted.

I should have stated in the first message that I have already checked that, and other aplications show cyrillic characters correctly. Internet Explorer shows the same title correctly whereas Firefox shows question marks.

Besides, Firefox used to display titles correctly too, I noticed this only recently, in the last week or so. I don't know what might have changed. I certainly did not change any settings by myself, that would cause this to happen.

Thanks for the try though.

I checked again, and now it seems to display correctly the same titles that yesterday were question marks. I did restart my computer earlier today. It seems that it is some bug that happens randomly.

I have a same problem and it did not disappear. It happens all the time.

The RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension (Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) has been reported to cause a similar issue by switching the title bar to UTF-16 encoding. If you do not have installed East Asian support then you will see boxes or ??? in the title bar.

Do not confuse the extension with the RealPlayer plugin (Tools > Add-ons > Plugins) that plays media files. The extension adds some extra features like saving media files. You can disable/remove the RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension in the RealPlayer Preferences (RealPlayer: Tools > Preferences > Download & Recording)

See also Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems --- Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of your add-ons is causing your problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Tools > Add-ons > Themes). See Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems and Troubleshoot issues with plugins like Flash or Java to fix common Firefox problems

If it does work in Safe-mode then disable all your extensions and then try to find which is causing it by enabling one at a time until the problem reappears. You can use "Disable all add-ons" on the Safe mode start window. You have to close and restart Firefox after each change via "File > Exit" (on Mac: "Firefox > Quit")

I don't have Real Player installed at all, not even any kind of plug-in or extension.

The thing is, it happens randomly, at least to me. So when I, for example restart the system, Firefox displays titles regularily. But at some point, after putting the system to sleep, or restarting Firefox, it starts behaving as described in the topic.

Therefore, it's some kind of bug, because I haven't noticed it in previous versions of Firefox, and I don't see any errors in Windows Application Event Log, nor System Event Log for that matter.

So, besides the procedure suggested above being tedious, I don't see how it could help. Maybe there really is an extension or plug-in causing the messed up page titles, but what if I need that plugin/extension. Nad remember, it didn't happen before.

I guess that, since there isn't a way of reproducing the error (I'm not sure how, why or when it starts happening), I have to assume it's a bug in Firefox. Every other Windows' application works correctly.

I also have the same problem for some cyrillics containing webpages but not all of them. In case it shows ???, I open that webpage with Windows Internet Explorer and in it webpage works fine!

If a server doesn't send an encoding then Firefox uses the default encoding as set in "Tools > Options > Content" (Western ISO-8859-1). A possibility in such cases is to switch to "View > Character Encoding > Auto-Detect > Universal" to see if that makes Firefox switch to the correct encoding.

Firefox doesn't use the encoding as specified in a meta tag in the document if the server sends an encoding. You can check that via Tools > Page Info > General In such cases you can try a few different encoding settings via "View > Character Encoding". Try some like "Western (ISO-8859-1)" or an other Western encoding (Windows-xxxx) or "Unicode (UTF-8)" or "Auto-Detect > Universal"

cor-el, you seem to be forgetting the fact that the pages I'm referring to textused to display correctlytext until recently. By recently I mean, before the latest Firefox upgrade, for example. So they are not some new pages that I just happened to open, they are newspaper sites that I read regularily, and that worked correctly in the past. Now I assume that they did not change their encoding, and I know I did not change mine. Besides, sometimes they work and sometimes they dont. So it's gotta be a bug. I don't think they change their encoding on a daily basis, and neither do I. And the other browser displays the titles correctly. So it's just Firefox. Plain and simple.

Here I attach the title displayed correctly (just now), and I will attach the same snapshot next time it goes wrong.

yeah mine is the same.

Same here as Dragutin but the problem is always, It happens to me in every cirilic website that show the????? in the title bar only and the website content is ok showin cirilic as should.

I have W7 and FF 3.6.4 recently updated form 3.6.3 hoping it would solve the problem .

And as Dragutin only happens in FF not in Opera IE or Chrome

i tried all the suggested here, nothign works.

Here's the screenshot when it screws up the page title.

I noticed that the bug is window specific - opening the same page in a new window shows the new window title correctly. I attached the screenshot containing simultaneous correct and buggy display.

Have same problem on W7 and FF3.6.3.

Have the same problem. Windows 7, Firefox 3.6.8 And it really shows a bug only when there are more than one tab open in one window. If I open the same page in new window, there is no problem.

P.S. Can't understand, where and how to see attachments you posted previous? I do not see any.

I found this problem happens everytime computer resumes from hibernation. Also, when I open new Firefox window, characters show correctly in new window, but in first one there are question marks.

I have the same problem here.

I'm running: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8

- on windows 7

For example, the string 'Беларусь' (Belarus) appeared as ??????? in the page title. Like others above, if I open another firefox window, then this window displayed the title correctly. That title also contained non-cyrillic characters, and they rendered ok.

The same word ('Беларусь') appears correctly in the window itself, and if you view the source, then the <title> declaration looks correct too.

If I opened another firefox window, (without closing firefox), then that new window would display the title correctly.

The page I was using was this:

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/partners/search/

- Select 'Belarus' from the option menu.

I just tried a test where I tried the page which had the ??????? in the title after exiting firefox, restarting, hibernating then unhibernating, but I couldn't get the problem to reappear.

I tend to use firefox heavily all day for work, and hibernate my machine each night. I'm not sure whether this bug is related to firefox having been used for a long time without a restart.

However, it is a real problem, and it isn't related to option settings or preferences being wrong - it seems specific to a window.

Exactly the same problem here: Window specific question marks appear on title bars and task bars after not having closed firefox for a long time, possibly in interrelation with using hibernate and/or sleep mode (though I wasn't able to reproduce the problem simply by entering these modes). That is to say, an old window won't display non-latin characters (cyrillic or chinese for instance) correctly but a new window opening the same page will display them correctly (even simultaneously as in a pic previously posted). Closing firefox while saving the current session keeps the problem intact, whereas closing firefox and opening thereafter a wholly new session removes the problem (for the time being) as if opening a new window in the current session. And I emphasize that the problem is only with title and task bars, the main content is shown correctly.

Tried everything already mentioned above, encoding is set to UTF-8 and auto-detect on Universal. Default encoding in Tools > Options > Content > Fonts & Colors > Advanced is on UTF-8. No Real-Player Plugins what so ever installed. Running on Vista, Fireforx 3.6.12.

I have the same problem too.

After I open a .pdf file titles in script different from Latin or Bulgarian turn to question marks. The reason why it works with Bulgarian script is because I have set Regional and Language Options > Advanced > Language for non-Unicode programmes to Bulgarian.

If I set it to Greek, then title pages in everything other than Latin and Bulgarian will be displayed as question marks after opening a .pdf file.

If I set it to Arabic, then it'll be all but Arabic and Latin... you get the drift.