Seeing Scrambled and Gibberish Texts in Safari

Question

Level 1

5 points

Seeing Scrambled and Gibberish Texts in Safari

I'm not sure how to explain this but here it goes:

I seem to be having a problem reading text from webpages that uses notepad-like software like GameFaqs.com and Ultimate-Guitar.com. Every time I open one of these walkthroughs or tabs I see nothing but gibberish. All the text are scrambled into nonsensical manner. I copied some of the text to TextEdit and I still see the scrambled mess but if I paste it in Microsoft Word, the words are ok.

I'm not sure if this is an OS problem or a software problem. Please somebody. Please tell me what's going on!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Nov 5, 2009 2:23 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 5, 2009 3:25 AM in response to krisfrosz133

HI,

It's poorly written HTML. It's the site, not your browser causing the problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html

Carolyn 🙂

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Answer 2

krisfrosz133 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 6, 2009 3:02 PM in response to krisfrosz133

Hi,

I really don't think so. I tried browsing the same website on a different laptop and that one works fine. Do you think my Mac has a corrupted data somewhere?

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Answer 3

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Nov 6, 2009 3:35 PM in response to krisfrosz133

kris --
I think you have a font problem.
That site shows up fine for me.
The problem is in a sans serif font . . .
It could be helvetica, arial, etc.

Questions:

1. Are you on 10.5.6?
2. Can you take a screen shot of the "mess" and upload it to yfrong, or photobucket
and then enter the URL they give you for forums?
3. Have you opened up your Font Book application and looked through your fonts
for another messed up font there? If not, do that.
4. You've cleared your Safari cache & history, right? If not, do that.

There are several usual culprits, but rather than guess, a screenshot would be a great help.
Let us know the answers to all of the above, OK?

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Answer 4

krisfrosz133 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 6, 2009 4:07 PM in response to TildeBee

1. I used to, but now it's 10.6.1.
2.Okay. Here's the screenshot from GameFaqs:

It's not just this website. Any other websites I go (With my Mac) will look something like this.

3 & 4. I'll do that right away.

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Answer 5

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Nov 6, 2009 4:12 PM in response to krisfrosz133

AHA!

You have a Courier problem.
Showed up with Snow.
Open up font book,
get rid of any Courier duplicate.
Open up the triangle so you'll get to see ALL versions.

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Answer 6

krisfrosz133 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 7, 2009 3:47 AM in response to TildeBee

Finally we're getting somewhere.

Okay, I see yellow triangles in Font Book. Should I right-click the yellowed ones and select "Disable/ Remove 'Courier'"?

....

YES! IT WORKED!! Now I can fully see all the text in these websites. Thank you so much, dude. I truly appreciate it!!!

Message was edited by: krisfrosz133

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Answer 7

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Nov 7, 2009 7:49 AM in response to krisfrosz133

kris --
Well, I don't usually get called Dude, but I kinda like it!
Very glad you're all sorted.
I'm not sure why this happens, but it's been showing up quite a bit lately.

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