Hi there,
after updating my Firefox Portable from 43.0.4 to 44.0.2, some text is displayed wonky here and there. The fonts look pixelated and sometimes also the colour is off, interestingly.
I remembered I had issues with this before and that I fixed it with either hardware accelation and/or anti-alias settings, so I fiddled with these in the FF config, but it didn’t change anything. I also checked my Windows settings, all fine, ClearType is on and fine-tuned. I also re-started FF in Safe Mode, the problem persisted.
So to see whether the problem really came from the update itself, I dug out my last backup from 1st of February. There, in the old version, 43.0.4, everything was still fine when I started the backed up FF. After the update to 44.0.2 to this copy, again the same wonky bits appeared in the same places.
Here you can see two examples of the weird display, each with the original (nice) display on top and what it looks like after the update below. Please also recognize that other stuff simply stays the same like the headline in the spreadsheet which is Arial size 10 just as the text below, but bold. I had to save the images as PNG so you can also see the changed blue in the first example. It’s just the same colour but somehow displays differently now...:
http://bildreif.de/temp/ff_update_font_1.png
http://bildreif.de/temp/ff_update_font_2.png
So I could use the old FF version, turn off automatic update and hope it gets fixed at some point... but of course I’d prefer an up-to-date FF that isn’t driving me nuts with pixelated snippets here and there.
Any help highly appreciated.
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Firefox maintains a Graphics Processing Unit blacklist for drivers that tend to crash when used. Likely, yours is on the blacklist in Firefox 44.x so hardware acceleration is disabled regardless of your setting. This is not specific to the portable version but a feature of Firefox itself. Details on which are blacklisted and how to force enable them are here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John, thanks for the information, I didn’t know about that. Sadly, the suggested config changes don’t do anything. And the article also seems to be outdated.
I googled a little bit more and about:support doesn’t show any blocked features like it should according to what I found. E. g. I also can run WebGL sites and all still available tests listed here http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1775755 play just fine with the FF that shows wonky fonts.
So not even sure the blacklisting is what causes the problem here? I just paste the troubleshooting information about graphis here and hope this is of any help:
FF 44: (wonky fonts)
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Adapter Drivers nvd3dum nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Adapter RAM 768
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom none
ClearType Parameters Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: R ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 200
Device ID 0x0191
DirectWrite Enabled false (6.1.7600.16763)
Driver Date 2-3-2015
Driver Version 9.18.13.4144
GPU #2 Active false
GPU Accelerated Windows 0/1 Basic
Subsys ID 22501682
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding No; Unsupported layers backend
Vendor ID 0x10de
WebGL Renderer Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0)
windowLayerManagerRemote false
AzureCanvasBackend skia
AzureContentBackend cairo
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend cairo
AzureSkiaAccelerated 0
FF 43: (healthy)
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Adapter Drivers nvd3dum nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Adapter RAM 768
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom none
ClearType Parameters Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: R ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 200
Device ID 0x0191
Direct2D Enabled true
DirectWrite Enabled true (6.1.7600.16763)
Driver Date 2-3-2015
Driver Version 9.18.13.4144
GPU #2 Active false
GPU Accelerated Windows 0/1 Basic
Subsys ID 22501682
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding No; Unsupported layers backend
Vendor ID 0x10de
WebGL Renderer Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0)
windowLayerManagerRemote false
AzureCanvasBackend direct2d
AzureContentBackend direct2d
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend cairo
AzureSkiaAccelerated 0