Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

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BeebMaster
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Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

I put off upgrading Ubuntu packages till the start of the new month today as I am still worried that one day it's going to upgrade my kernel without telling me and I will lose NFSv2, which will make my life impossible. So far it hasn't happened with the latest upgrades, but the new version of Firefox it's been nagging me to install for a few weeks has ruined font display.

It's Firefox 118.0.1 (64-bit), it says.

This screenshot of the forum with the what's-gone-wrong-pane showing has multiple "font blocked at visibility level 2" nonsense. It's even blocking Arial, though it looks to me like most of the page is now displayed in Arial, whereas it wasn't before. This is definitely a different font than I used to get.
Screenshot_2023-10-01_12-14-47.png
Worse than that, it won't display Arial or Arial Black on my website, for the same reason which are the only fonts it uses (apart from rare instances of Courier when I need a mono-space font), so it looks wrong now.

"Something I read" said I should change these settings:

Code: Select all

layout.css.font-visibility.standard 
layout.css.font-visibility.resistFingerprinting
layout.css.font-visibility.trackingprotection
I think to "3", but it might be "1", depending on whether "3" and "1" are good and bad for my purposes, but none of these settings existed, I only have the base value layout.css.font-visibility which is set to 3.

I added them and experimented with values, as well as the base value setting, but nothing I have done has got my fonts back or removed the "error".

The font the forum is using now is considerably smaller than previously and is starting to hurt my eyes already.

Anything else I can try?
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by guesser »

Those levels are apparently:

Code: Select all

  #   1 - only base system fonts
  #   2 - also fonts from optional language packs
  #   3 - also user-installed fonts
but I don't get any of those warnings here. My windows machine is mostly using Trebuchet MS and Verdana on stardot.
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

Pi4, on Firefox 102, has these settings, and the fonts work:
Screenshot_2023-10-01_12-54-39.png
I replicated those on my PC with the new Firefox 118 but it doesn't make a difference. I don't get the option to delete the "layout.css.font-visibility" setting, so I still have that plus the other 4 I added.

Spose I should try safe mode in case it's some add-on I've forgotten about doing all this...
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

...nope, safe mode, or "Troubleshoot Mode", still has the fonts blocked. Bit stumped really, seems rather a fundamental problem if Firefox can't even display Arial.
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

I made the simplest HTML page as a test:

Code: Select all

<HTML>
<span style="Font-family:Arial;font-size:16pt">Hello Arial World!</span>
</HTML>
Even that doesn't work:
Screenshot_2023-10-01_13-11-07.png
Dunno why it's blocking 2 additional fonts I'm not even using!
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by SKS1 »

Do you even have Arial installed?
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

Looks like it:
Screenshot_2023-10-01_13-20-33.png
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

Well, well. Here's my second Firefox profile, and the fonts work!!
Screenshot_2023-10-01_13-22-13.png
So how do I compare Profile 1 with Profile 2 without having to check every individual setting...?
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

The main difference between the two profiles is that have private browsing turned on for profile 1, where the fonts don't work.

If I turn it off, the fonts work.

Sounds like I have to sacrifice my privacy to save my eyesight!
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BigEd »

Is it in part because the fonts are held elsewhere, which is a potential privacy problem?

Random internet page says (about some perhaps-related difficulty):
The safest way to get Font Awesome icons to display consistently between browsers is to serve Font Awesome from your hosting server. Because the Font Awesome files will be served from your domain, the CORS issue won’t occur. In addition, we aren’t inadvertently weakening our website security.
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by guesser »

It's because allowing pages to probe what fonts you have available allows you to be de-anonymized and tracked between sites, so that'll be why it restricts the fonts available in private browsing mode.

So to put it the other way round you sacrifice your fonts to save your privacy
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

Well, OK, but it wasn't happening yesterday before the update, and it must be reversible by a custom user setting surely?
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

Now then. If I turn off private browsing, and enable "strict" tracking protection, delete cookies and clear history on exit, and don't remember any history, that sounds exactly the same as private browsing, but my fonts get through!

I read up about what Mozilla had to say about private browsing, and they say it's nothing to do with being anonymous online and everything to do with being anonymous in your own household. So I probably don't need it anyway. Everybody at home already knows who I am. But I wondered if the location of my fonts (in /usr/share/fonts, rather than in my own home dir) might have something to do with it.
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by scruss »

Font location doesn't matter, as long as fontconfig can find them.

You may not have Arial installed, but fontconfig does aliases. The unrequested "Nimbus Roman No9 L" font from earlier is fontconfig aliasing Times New Roman to something close.If you want the old Windows fonts, install the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package for real Arial, TNR, Verdana, etc.
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

I believe I have, along with 537 other fonts:
Screenshot_2023-10-03_18-34-56.png
Whenever I get a new computer, I copy them from my main data drive and install them, viz. my notes here from December 2020:

Code: Select all

10.	Install fonts from BMNFS
	(Copy to usr/share/fonts and update with fc-cache -fv)
I think I even had to buy a font once.
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Re: Forum Fonts Blocked After Firefox Update

Post by BeebMaster »

Just checked this as well:

Code: Select all

2023-10-03 18:40:27 ian@BMDesktop2020:~$ sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
[sudo] password for ian: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
ttf-mscorefonts-installer is already the newest version (3.8ubuntu2).
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 8 not to upgrade.
2023-10-03 18:40:36 ian@BMDesktop2020:~$
Though it isn't in my install notes to manually install that package, so something else must do it automatically.
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