Default Font in Safari Won't Change After Upgrade to Leopard

Try quitting Safari if it's running, then delete the Safari preferences file, com.apple.Safari.plist from Home/Library/Preferences and restart Safari. You will have to set your preferences again, but this will create a new preferences file, as the old one is probably corrupted.

Mulder

Some sites have stylesheets that will override any font setting you have in Safari. One of them just happens to be these very Discussion Forums. I can set any font I like, at any size, and the forums will ignore it completely.

Have you tried testing this with a lot of sites, against one that we know will allow font changes, which is Macintouch.com? You should also try setting up a new User Account and testing Safari there to see if the problem persists in that account.

Mulder

We'll try removing the cache files.

Go to Home/Library/Caches/Safari and remove the contents of that Safari folder (all the folders inside it), then go back to Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari and remove the contents of that folder. Then restart Safari and test it again.

Mulder

At this point we're basically limited to two options: the first is to use a new user account and migrate everything over to it, or try reinstalling the 10.5.4 Combo Update, after you Repair Permissions.

The choice is yours, but the latter is the easiest to try.

Mulder

No, the Combo Update is not on the disk; it's a 500MB download from Apple here: <apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1054comboupdate.html>.

Repair Permissions is something you do from Disk Utility, in the HD/Applications/Utilities folder. After reinstalling the 10.5.4 Combo Update, Repair Permissions again, then restart your Mac and test Safari again.

Mulder

It's not a problem. As long as you do it before you apply the Combo Update, and again after you apply the Combo Update. Permissions do change for a variety of reasons; it's just resetting them to what they should be normally.

Mulder

We're left with two things, both of which may be somewhat time-consuming.

The first is to use the new user account you created and migrate all your programs and settings that work over to it, and then delete the old user account, or:

Do an Archive & Install, with Preserve Users and Network Settings. This will give you a completely new installation of 10.5 and move the old one to a folder named Previous System, which you can then delete. All your users and network settings will be preserved, but you will need to use Software Update afterward to bring your system current.

Mulder

Rookie --
You said
+when I use Safari, my default font is something random.+

It is very possible that you have a simple font conflict.
If you open your Font Book application, and look at all the font samples there,
can you look through all the fonts, and see the one that looks like your "random" font?