Weird Firefox rendering on Windows 7 32bit

Trojan

Hi all,

I'm seeing a strange issue with Firefox rendering - it's showing some black borders on divs, see image:



This issue persists through an uninstall, delete of all Firefox related files, and reinstall.

This isn't caused by the "Load Images Automatically" option being turned off, but it does look similar. Could it be related to a corrupt default html.css that somehow survives a reinstall?

It's particularly noticeable on Hotmail with similar borders on elements, and on the Google search page (image above).

I'm suspecting a corrupt default html.css with Firefox, but like I said this survives through a reinstall, including deletion of every file in the filesystem with *firefox* in the name.

Any ideas?

Overheal

I have never seen anything like that before. I've seen cases where the html fails to render but its usually a connectivity issue. try a system restore? Install anything lately?

Alun

Have you tried turning off "Use hardware acceleration when available" in Options > Advanced? I was getting some strange blocky effects on the buttons when hovering over them that disappeared when I did this.

Capt'n Midnight

have you run it in safe mode

which version / are you on the beta ?
do you get the same problem in much older versions /

any chance it's video acceleration (last century) - try windows safe mode

what happens if you change the render engine / extensions for open tab in IE etc. / how does the pages looking in in IE / Chome / Opera


https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

At the top of the Firefox window, click the Firefox button, go over to the Help menu and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.... Firefox will start up with the Firefox Safe Mode dialog.
Note: You can also start Firefox in Safe Mode by holding down the shift key while starting Firefox.

Alun

Another thought ... if you have integrated graphics, esp. the dual Intel/AMD kind as found on many HP laptops, the latest Windows "platform update" (KB2670838) has caused a lot of problems in this regard. Try uninstalling that and see if that helps.

Trojan

Thanks for the ideas, folks - it's not my own laptop, it's a family member's (*le sigh*), so I'll try that when I get my hands on it.

Funny enough, I wrote a blog post - exactly 1 year ago to the day - about turning off hardware acceleration in Firefox, but never thought to try it in this situation. Will report back.

Trojan

I know what it's not...

It's not hardware acceleration
It's not block images loading automatically
It's not block images loading (exceptions)
It's not blocking images per se, just images and possibly colours set via CSS afaics

And the flip side...

It survives an uninstall/reinstall
It survives a Firefox Reset

Back in a bit...

Trojan

It's also not a plugin
It's not a theme
It's not "allow websites to choose their own colours/fonts".

Trojan

It occurs in Safe Mode.

Trojan

It's not View -> Page Style -> No style (it's set to Basic, which seems to be correct)

zenno

Did you try this ? might work. Worth a shot...

1. In the Firefox address bar, enter "about:config" (without the quotes),
2. There's a warning about "This might void your warranty!". Having paid exactly zero dollars for your software, there actually isn't any in the first place, so click on the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
3. Now do a search for the color management setting. Simply type "gfx.color" to start searching for the property name.
4. Double click to change the setting from 2 to 0.

That's it.

Color management will be disabled and the colors should hopefully look normal now.

Trojan

Got it!

It was something to do with Windows theming. I just tried changing to Windows 7 default theme and that sorted it.

My gawd that was a total pain in the ass!

Trojan

Bonus points question: why didn't it affect Chrome?

Capt'n Midnight

Trojan wrote: »

Bonus points question: why didn't it affect Chrome?

you could try downloading a load of apps and programs that use different rendering engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_%28CSS%29


how did it look in IEtab ?

Overheal

Trojan wrote: »

Bonus points question: why didn't it affect Chrome?

whatever way it's coded.

you could try to recreate the issue under opera etc too

Trojan

That was an absolute pain, particularly because it was my godmother's machine and I didn't have regular access to it. There's no way I want to go and re-create it now

I hope this thread is of use to someone with similar issues in the future though.

Torqay

Trojan wrote: »

Bonus points question: why didn't it affect Chrome?

Because Windows themes do not affect the Chrome environment.

Trojan

Any details on why not? Is that Google giving the finger to Microsoft accessibility?

Overheal

Trojan wrote: »

Any details on why not? Is that Google giving the finger to Microsoft accessibility?

If you notice it just doesn't use the basic window API/container/whatever you want to call it. Jon willfully withdrew from programming though..