Google Fonts
Does TFF perhaps have a major problem with Google Fonts? And / or Wordpress?
While playing around with Wordpress I notized that TFF stalls when trying to connect to fonts.gstatic.com - as a result the Wordpress-page doesnt load:
- It fails to load images, css and text elements completely
- or it needs up to 20 min to load
- and some text elemements are flashing - they appear and disappear every second.
Tested it with the v.31 to v.38 branch with always the same results.
Disabeling all extensions doesnt help.
Only the old v.24.6 works fine: It loads the Wordpress-pages in a second without problems.
TFF 7450 v.38.7.0. Powermac Mini, 1 GHz, 10.4.11
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1 Posted by Juergen on 13 Mar, 2016 01:42 PM
Disabeling in Preferences -> Content -> Fonts & Colors -> Advanced -> checkbox "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" fixes the problem for me. But some icons are missing which are seemingly generated by fonts. So this cant be a general solution.
2 Posted by Juergen on 13 Mar, 2016 02:09 PM
Funny effect: taking the mouse on any OSX menu item forces TFF to load and show the missing text parts. Releasing the menu lets the text again disappear. Look at the screen shots.
Support Staff 3 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 13 Mar, 2016 03:19 PM
Juergen, do you mean any Wordpress page or the Wordpress Editor or just http://demo.mh-themes.com/magazine?
On http://demo.mh-themes.com/magazine I cannot reproduce any of the problems you mentioned.
4 Posted by Juergen on 13 Mar, 2016 04:47 PM
Chris, sorry for blaming TFF for the problem. You can close this thread, because I think my problem is solved now.
It happenend to me on any Website which accesses fonts.gstatic.com - the service just doesnt load in TFF. I reseted TFF, but the behavior was still the same. (Safari worked fine - therefore I was confused).
So I did some more research. and the solution was offered here:
http://www.webnots.com/fix-slow-page-loading-waiting-fonts-googleapis-com/
The solution is to use the Google DNS Servers in the OS X network utility because the missing fonts are already cached in this public Google DNS servers.
Now it works fine - and all the problem pages are loading in a second. It seems to me now fonts.gstatic.com even wont be called because of using the Google DNS servers.
Thanks!
5 Posted by Juergen on 14 Mar, 2016 01:56 PM
The problem seems to be more complex than I thought. And the DNS-trick worked only for one day. The stalling on fonts.gstatic.com still exists. And it seems to be a general problem which is discussed here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1228799
Even the fonts used by the bugzilla-page dont load, because of this and similar errors I get in the webconsole (more than 400 entries):
downloadable font: not usable by platform (font-family: "Fira Sans" style:normal weight:normal stretch:normal src index:2) source: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/skins/contrib/Mozilla/fira/FiraSans-Regular.woff
Or at other sites:
downloadable font: not usable by platform (font-family: "Source Sans Pro" style:normal weight:normal stretch:normal src index:2) source: https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/sourcesanspro/v9/ODelI1aHBYDBqgeIAH2zlNHq-FFgoDNV3GTKpHwuvtI.woff
The workoround offered in the Bugzilla thread doesnt work für TFF because a setting with the name "gfx.direct2d.force-enabled" doesnt exist.
Support Staff 6 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 14 Mar, 2016 05:06 PM
That bug is unrelated. That's a Windows-specific bug, and it wasn't present until 42 in any case.
What you're describing sounds network-related, especially since DNS changes did mitigate the problem, albeit temporarily. I can't reproduce this on any of the test systems either, but I'm not on your network.
7 Posted by Juergen on 14 Mar, 2016 06:43 PM
Camaron, thanks for investigating this issue.
But I doubt its a network issue because comment #17 in Bugzilla says: "The "downloadable font: not usable by platform" error occurs AFTER fonts successfully download BUT are rejected by the font activation API's."
So the fonts are already downloaded and cached, BUT TFF cant render them.
AND when I am clicking on a menu item THEN the text parts with this fonts will be shown.
AND the text disappear when releasing the menu item.
AND when I uncheck in the preferences the checkbox "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" THEN all previously downloaded fonts are shown fine.
This behavior doesnt sound to be related to any network issue.
And look at this weird CPU-behavior seen at the screenshots:
1) in preferences allow off - the text with already downloaded fonts looks fine (CPU activity 0,10%)
2) allow on - the text is now invisible (CPU activity rises up to >60%)
3) allow on AND touching a menu - the text is now visible (activity window cant be shown here)
4) releasing the menu and text selected - the text is again invisible (CPU still >60%)
5) allow off and text still selected and visible - browser console calls font errors (CPU goes down to 0,10%)
I have seen several postings around the net about this problem with Firefox. Some of them are reporting that reseting Firefox (like I did) is fixing the problem - but just for some hours (same here). Perhaps the DNS-change didnt fix anything, but the reset of TFF fixed it temporarily. Therefore it must be something else ...
My old Minimac has only 1 GB RAM and 1,5 GHz speed. TFF is using 150 MB RAM (and 1,5 GB virtual memory on the harddisk. 90 GB free space). Can poor memory and missing hardware acceleration be the problem here?
Support Staff 8 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 14 Mar, 2016 11:39 PM
I'm not sure what's going on with your system, but I don't get any of those font family errors loading any Bugzilla URL, and the fonts display correctly. TenFourFox doesn't use OpenGL hardware acceleration, and although I don't have any 1GB systems here, my 1.25GB iMac G4 doesn't have a problem with any of the URLs you provided. I can't reproduce any of those errors in your screenshot or any of the behaviour you describe with any of my test machines, which also run 10.4.11.
There are two test cases in that Bugzilla entry. Both of them encapsulate the WOFF font, so this would eliminate the network as a cause. Do they load for you? The exact URLs are
(Fira Sans) https://bug1228799.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=8693940
(Maestro, a musical notation font) https://bug1228799.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=8728664
Are you using any modified settings, such as the ones from MacRumors? Have you tried with a clean profile (see "How to reset your profile" at lower right)?
9 Posted by Juergen on 15 Mar, 2016 01:29 PM
Today I did six times a profile reset to test the strange behavior, and its always the same:
In Preferences "Allow ..." is on.
1) Before the refresh: TFF cant load the font.
2) After refresh: TFF loads the font. But only the first one.
3) Because opening anyother page (like the Bugzilla page) breaks it. TFF cant load the font but loads it from the cache. Other fonts cant be loaded anymore.
Visiting some other pages then the usual behavior starts again. CPU goes up to >60%. Loaded fonts are only shown when clicking on a menu ...
No modified setting have ever been used. Running an OS X network test shows no problems. Safari 4.1.3 (my standard browser) has no problems to load and show the fonts.
Support Staff 10 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 15 Mar, 2016 04:36 PM
Juergen, I tested this with fresh user profiles on both 10.4 and 10.5 with two Macs (Pismo G3 400 MHz 1GB RAM and my shiny new PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz 2 GB RAM) and still cannot reproduce your problems. This implies there must be some problem with your network setup or your Mac OS X installation that affects TFF but not Safari. If this was a TFF problem, i.e. all users were affected, this support forum would be flooded with complaints.
I see that you do have a problem, but to find out what's going on you'll probably have to test your Mac Mini on another network/DSL connection and/or try a new Mac OS X user account to rule our user specific settings on the OS level.
11 Posted by Juergen on 15 Mar, 2016 07:32 PM
Chris and Cameron, thanks for your kind reply and your advise that I should have done my homework at first by checking the other Macs in my network before causing trouble here. And you are right.
I am realy sorry for wasting your time. I am feeling sooo stupid ...
I installed the Combo Update 10.4.11, did a PR-RAM reset, cleaned the system with ONYX, and did again a profile reset of TFF. Now everything works fine.
Ashamed.
Support Staff 12 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 16 Mar, 2016 06:20 AM
No worries. If it had been a bug in TenFourFox this would have meant much more work (for Cameron) to fix it. It's important that users report problems. We've had many reports that turned out to be real bugs and, ultimatey, this has improved the browser a lot. Any way, we're glad to help even if the problem turns out to be no browser bug after all. That's what this help forum is for :-)