There are reports from users who updated to the latest Firefox having issues with fonts.
Did it auto updated by any chance?
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No, it didn't update. I'm still on an older version.
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It's definitely not a new version of Firefox that is causing it because I have Firefox 84.0 which is from Dec 2020 and it does not have bold text. I don't know when or what caused it to change though because I use Chrome just for this site because I leave myself logged in. I use Firefox for everything else I do online.
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I think Firefox might have an option to stop websites from changing fonts. Maybe that setting is enabled which causes it. I don't remember where the setting is, I'll see if I can find it and see if it does anything.
Edit: Nevermind, I found it. It's under options, general, language and appearance, fonts and colors, advanced. It is already set to allow sites to change the fonts.
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I saw this option, disabling it makes the fonts bold again for me, but then the fonts themselves are changed to whatever's in Firefox's settings instead of the website's own font.
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Yeah, I was just about to edit my post and say that when I disabled that setting it showed the bold fonts. I'm not sure why.
Edit: Maybe the site is set to not use bold, but if you don't allow the site to setup the fonts, Firefox determines that is is a heading or title and decides to bold it.
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I don't know about the site being set up to not use bold. When opened in fresh, vanilla Chromium without being logged in, the fonts are bold.
Even then, something had to change to make it go from bold to normal, so surely it can be changed back.
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Chrome could be set to not allow sites to change fonts by default and that is why it is bold there, but I'm not sure. I only use this site on Chrome, so I didn't notice any change.
Edit: Maybe steamgifts used to use bold and recently changed it. Maybe the default setting on Chrome ignores site font settings and Firefox allows the changes so that only people using Firefox would notice.
I looked through the list of Firefox shortcuts here and didn't see anything that I think would cause it.
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Did SG or ESGST change fonts?
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The fonts are unchanged if I disable ESGST, and I can't find a font settings inside it.
As for SG, I can open the site in another browser and the fonts will be bold, it only happens in Firefox.
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I have the same problem, I have tried with Firefox ESR and Nightly so it is not version related.
There is a problem with the CSS of the site, for some reason now Firefox does not apply the font-weight rule (700/bold) with Open Sans font. It only happens on Steamgifts btw, so something must have been modified in the code. Google Fonts shows the font in bold correctly:
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans
(check Bold 700 in 24px, that's the size of the game titles on SG).
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So it's something that Steamgifts changed, and not something I've done?
That's annoying. Thanks for letting me know.
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Yes because, as I said, I have tried with different versions (clean, without extensions), with different profiles and configurations and they look the same. It is not version or config related.
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Glad to know I'm not going crazy and fonts did indeed change for some reason
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Try with another browser or an entire new firefox profile (CMD + R -> firefox -p) to check, if it's a system related font issue.
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May be irrelevant, but have you recently installed any fonts? From my experience the installation of the Helvetica, has caused me some problems, and the only solution was to uninstall it.
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Open Sans is a google font, Steamgifts is not using a system font in this case, check what I wrote here: https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/v4zyYUK
and the screenshot.
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I wanted to use the font in a 3D program, but it did, I don't know how, changed the appearance of the browsers, without being used in them.
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That's because most sites use local (system) fonts and when you installed Helvetica it became a default font, so several sites used that font until you uninstalled it.
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Ok, but how? Had been installed without prioritizing its use in the programs. The browser definitely did not use it. As if there was a conflict with another font(s), which in any settings did not appear anywhere, but was visible in the browser (some characters appeared in bold).
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It's a little hard to explain but, long story short, Helvetica was probably set as default instead of Arial (a default font for Sans-serif typeface) so all sites that were using Arial (most of them, the font you are reading now is Arial) for Sans-serif started to use Helvetica instead until you uninstalled it.
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Thanks for the explanation. Last question, so the last installed font is set as the default between the same typeface?
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I don't know if that is always the case, but you can change the config in each browser to use whatever font you want for sans-serif, so you can install any font and, if it replaces Arial or any other as default, you can set it again in the browser configuration.
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I'm almost sure I checked all the possible settings from operating system and browser, but it's been years since then and I may be wrong. However the solution I had found was to uninstall the last installed font. Anyway, thanks again :)
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Websites use CSS rules to set the font to use by specifying a series of fonts with fallbacks if one is not found.
So a rule like font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; will first try to load the first font, then second one if not found, and so on. Generally Helvetica is a mac font, and Arial is a windows font, each being specifically tuned for that OS. While these fonts are designed to look similar. the font rendering algorithms in each OS are quite different:
- https://blog.codinghorror.com/whats-wrong-with-apples-font-rendering/
- https://blog.codinghorror.com/font-rendering-respecting-the-pixel-grid/
- https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/12/font-smoothing-anti-aliasing-and-sub-pixel-rendering/
and so for your case, not many people using Windows have the Helvetica font installed, so if you do many websites will look weird because Helvetica is usually specified first in the list before Arial.
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I understand how this is done, but I do not understand how I could put the Arial as the first choice. Maybe I should uninstall it and reinstall it? Maybe the only thing I had not tried.
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That won't make a difference. It is the website designers that chooses what font they want to use, good webdev practices recommend sticking to the so called web-safe fonts that are guaranteed to be buitin on majority of systems regardless of OS.
And there's also web fonts that are downloaded on demand by browsers, which don't need to be installed system-wide.
Now if you don't like a certain website style, some browsers like Firefox allow you to override certain font styles to your liking taking higher precedence than what the website CSS specifies:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-fonts-and-colors-websites-use
Or you can even use browser extension to override CSS however you like (e.g Stylus)
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I see, something so simple yet causes headaches. I wonder if there is standardization in fonts or if it would solve any of the problems.
Anyway, I came to write about a possible solution, and I leave wiser. Thanks a lot guys.
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yep, in this case the website was extra specific in wanting Helvetica, so if the font is installed it will be loaded first. Generally the generic sans-serif alone is enough as it maps to the preferred font on each OS (Arial on Windows, Helvetica on Mac, and maybe BitStream Vera on most Linux distros I think)
PS: there are ways to "map" font name to different ones in Windows, this involves messing with the registry:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/input/font-technology#font-substitution
in fact, you can see under that registry key that by default "Helvetica" is mapped to "Arial" (this substitution occurs if font was not installed)
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Have the same problem from today. Looks like a change on Sg website? To be honest, preferred previous look/font. The question is if this was intentional or not.
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For whatever it's worth I'm on the latest Firefox version and everything looks the same as it always has.
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It's solved (press CTRL-F5). Now the question is: it was a problem with this site (some change in the code) or a problem with the web font itself? (Google's fault)
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No changes on this end, so it may have been an issue with Google serving the font.
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Since FIrefox did update yesterday, and force refreshing page makes headers bold again, I would assume update did something to page cache, and force refreshing it fixes the issue?
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I only have my memory to trust that my browser prompted for update yesterday.
But if that was issue with Firefox and Google Fonts, why ctrl + f5 helped right away?
edit
My firefox.exe was created 3.06.2022 so I would assume I remembered that right
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Ctrl-F5 is a hard reload, it reloads the entire page (bypassing the browser cache) so the web font (Open Sans) is downloaded again from google servers.
It was not the solution, I added that tip because it was the quickest way to check that it was already fixed (by Google).
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It was at most a minor annoyance (hence why I didn't bother to comment before) but it's nice that it went away already. Thanks for keeping us updated, I was silently following the thread.
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Enjoyed following this. Thank you to all who did a little sleuthing especialy to Orono. Take a bow, sir! :)
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I bumped my mouse a few minutes ago and it accidentally clicked something, and it made all of the bold fonts on the site normal. I don't know how it did it, and don't know how to fix it either.Not my fault, thanks to orono for figuring out the cause.Something happened to Steamgifts that stopped its font from working properly on Firefox, as a result all text is the same weight, and isn't bold anymore.
The site is supposed to look like this (on my PC anyway): https://i.imgur.com/oJukCIW.png
Now it looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/upFNQ8v.png
cg pls fixIt wasn't Steamgifts/cg's fault, the font itself broke and now it's fixed. thank cg and orono
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