# Text is garbled on Websites using Safari



## gaildeonn (Apr 13, 2006)

When I go to some webistes I get garbled type with numbers all smashed together. I've tried changing the default encoding in the pref menu but that didn't work. Can Someone help?


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Apr 13, 2006)

Have you installed or removed any fonts lately?  Done any "haxies" to your system?  Installed any new programs that may have installed newer/older/different versions of a certain font?


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## Giaguara (Apr 13, 2006)

You could try disabling fonts .. if you have installed any.
In Font Book, select your user, select there all fonts, and click on the "v" button which will disactivate the fonts. (All system fonts will still be active, they cannot be disactivated).
If Safari will behave correctly, it was caused by a bad font. If you have a lot of fonts, you can enable a part of them, test if the issue occurs, enable or disable some more until you would find the guilty one.
And if it wasn't the font, let us know so can test more.


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## Veljo (Apr 13, 2006)

It could also be bad CSS coding. Post some links to the sites in question and let some other Safari users test them out.


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## RacerX (Apr 13, 2006)

gaildeonn said:
			
		

> When I go to some webistes I get garbled type with numbers all smashed together.


Turn off Helvetica fractions... they don't work with Cocoa apps correctly.


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## slaz55 (Apr 14, 2006)

I agree with RacerX its Helvetica fractions unload it!


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## nickjd (Oct 29, 2006)

I have a variant on these problems, in the form of Safari's garbled rendering of italic text on Wikipedia pages. I've tried all the usual fixes and still it happens, but only on Wikipedia. As yet, I've not seen it on other sites. Does anyone have this problem? Do they know how to fix it? Is it that WP use an italicised font that Safari can't read? Or is it me...?

Thanks

n


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## chuckla (Nov 26, 2006)

I have a very similar, if not the same, problem- garbled appearing text on some web sites. It is always italicized text, and the garbled characers are two letters in the alphabet before what should be there. "_the_" shows up as "_vfg_" and spaces are represented by double quotes. This line: "_Vjg"vqwt"iwfkg"tqnc{gf_"   is really   "_The tour guide relayed_"   from this site: http://blogs.walkerart.org/newmedia/?author=5

It is apparently purely a display issue, since copying and pasting yields the correct letters and spaces, though it loses its italics formatting. I tried to copy the paragraph above from its web site and paste it in this post, but had to type in the letters.

It's most frustrating- I run into it repeatedly.

Anybody got any ideas (other than changing browsers?)

Chuck


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## nickjd (Nov 26, 2006)

Hi Chuck - well, I still have no solution to this 'garbled text in Safari' problem either. Largely I've given up and started using Firefox, which seems to work fine in this regard. 

If you ever come across another fix that works, I'd be interested to hear it, and I'll post anything I hear also.

Cheers

Nick


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## DocSavage44 (Nov 6, 2007)

I have the same problem exactly.


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## Satcomer (Nov 6, 2007)

Clear your font cache. This may help.


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## WorldC (Oct 25, 2009)

I had similar issues - and even seeing the same garbled text that was linked to on the first page here.

Turns out it was old and duplicate fonts.  Use Font Book to check for dupes and disable them. Note, for system fonts you may have to manually disable the >other< font instead of the highlighted one.

Also check for weird versions of fonts, particularly Helvetica and Courier hanging around.  I had to disable "Courier Final Draft" before I got rid of all the garbled text.

C


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## irocnroll (Oct 27, 2009)

Yep been running FF on my mac for years, havent looked back (Safari)


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## galdamez (Nov 14, 2009)

I would be willing to bet the garbled text has something to do with a corrupt Courier font. I hit a page earlier today with some code samples in the middle of the page. Like everyone said, they came out all garbled. Copying and pasting the text to TextEdit revealed the correct text, however. 

I dug into the stylesheet of the original site and found that that particular div on the page was forcing a Courier font face. I checked out the Courier font within Safari's preferences (Appearance) and sure enough it couldn't produce any legible text. Courier CE and Courier New were working fine, however.

Opening up Applications/Font Book revealed yellow triangles where I had duplicate fonts. I don't do a lot of graphic design, so I don't really know how I got so many duplicates. It may have been when I installed Adobe Creative Suite CS3. That's my best guess. But some of the fonts were duplicated up to 3 times, so it couldn't have just been one source. 

Regardless of the cause, my list was riddled with duplicates. All the duplicates looked fine except for that one additional Courier font. Removing it fixed the problem in Safari.

What's really bizarre about this whole thing is that Firefox would display those sections of Courier font just fine even with the corrupt Courier font installed. It's as if Firefox was loading the "right" Courier font from the list of duplicates. I did have to restart Firefox, however, to make the changes final across everything.

Feel free to see attached screen shots.


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