[RESOLVED] Un-displayable Characters in FireFox

[terryZ]

I maintain a small website for a religious group (http://www.geocities.com/rimefoundation).

When I view the site with FireFox, non-standard characters such as umlauted o's (ö) and e's with acute accents (é) are displayed as a question mark. Internet Explorer has no problem with these. Neither, it seems, does VirtualDr.

Is there an "extension" for FireFox that will solve this problem?

Is this problem even solvable?

Thanks in advance.

[shiva_42]

I'm using Firefox 1.0.1, and don't seem to have the trouble you describe... unless I just don't know where to look. Are you using the latest versions of Firefox, or an older (problematic) version?

You MAY need a plug-in to resolve, but can't tell enough at this stage. Can you perhaps post a screen-shot of the example you see?

[terryZ]

I'm using version 1.0.1 also so I must need a plug-in.

I've never attached a photo before ... hope this works.

In any case, the very first words on the page are "Rimé Foundation" but they appear in my browser as "Rim? Foundation".

[terryZ]

I think I discovered a work-around.

I went to TOOLS | OPTIONS | GENERAL | LANGUAGES and installed FRENCH (which has these vowels). It seems to work okay (screen shot attached).

You would think that FireFox would have an extended Latin alphabet.

Thanks.

[Cherokee]

zeszut,

I am using Test Release Candidate 1.0.3, and have no problems with the non-standard characters on your site. The diacritical marks are shown as intended. I have to wonder what your character encoding settings are, and if you have these entries in the prefs.js file:

user_pref("intl.accept_languages", "en-us");
user_pref("intl.charset.detector", "");
user_pref("intl.charsetmenu.browser.cache", "us-ascii, windows-1252, ISO-8859-15, UTF-8, ISO-8859-1");

[terryZ]

I'm at home now and have no problem with the site.

Here I have:

Languages in order of preference:
English/United States [en-us]
English [en]

Character Encoding:
Western (ISO-8859-1)

If my memory serves, the browser at work has the same but I'll check tomorrow.

[shiva_42]

This MAY even be a problem with the fonts (or lack thereof) that are installed on the machine where you notice the problem from. It may not be firefox to begin with.

Do you have IE on the same machine, and if so, does it exhibit the same symptoms?

[terryZ]

Cherokee:

FireFox at work had before I added "French [fr]":

Languages in order of preference:
English/United States [en-us]
English [en]

Character Encoding:
Western (ISO-8859-1)

Shiva:

IE displays vowels correctly.

[Cherokee]

Terry,

Please check the "about:config" for: intl.accept_charsets

If it is user set, backup your prefs.js file and select: Modify | Reset
This will reset it to default value.

Also verify that the below entries are in the "all.js" file.
pref("intl.accept_languages", "chrome://navigator/locale/navigator.properties");
pref("intl.accept_charsets", "iso-8859-1,*,utf-8");




Somehow Firefox is getting stuck on UTF-8

Try manually selecting: View | Character Encoding
Western (ISO-8859-1)

Other than this, and a couple of older bug reports, I have no more to offer:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158285
Also take a look at the bugs referenced in the above report.

[terryZ]

Sorry, Cherokee, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Where is the "about:config"? Where are these files you refer to? Etc?

[Cherokee]

Terry,

Clear the Location Bar
Type: about:config
In the "Filter" field, then type: intl.accept_charsets
In the "Status" column check to see if it is set to: user set
If so, then right click, and select: "Reset"
That will return the setting to "Default"

The "all.js" file is located here:
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\greprefs

The Toolbar at the very top of the Firefox Window you will see:
File | Edit | View | .....
Click on the "View" tab
Then in the "Character Encoding" menu, ensure that "Western (ISO-8859-1)" is selected
If not, then select that setting: "Western (ISO-8859-1)"

[terryZ]

Cherokee:

Clear the Location Bar
Type: about:config
In the "Filter" field, then type: intl.accept_charsets
In the "Status" column check to see if it is set to: user set
If so, then right click, and select: "Reset"
That will return the setting to "Default"

Already set to DEFAULT

The "all.js" file is located here:
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\greprefs
pref("intl.accept_languages", "chrome://navigator/locale/navigator.properties");
pref("intl.accept_charsets", "iso-8859-1,*,utf-8");

These lines all in ALL.JS

The Toolbar at the very top of the Firefox Window you will see:
File | Edit | View | .....
Click on the "View" tab
Then in the "Character Encoding" menu, ensure that "Western (ISO-8859-1)" is selected
If not, then select that setting: "Western (ISO-8859-1)"

ISO-8859-1 already selected.

Since it's working okay with the added language, I might as well let it be.

Thanks again,

Terry

[terryZ]

Problem solved (sort of).

I opened FireFox and it asked me to download updates. The "update" turned out to be the full FireFox 1.0.3.

I downloaded it, installed it and removed the French language. Works fine.

Case closed.