Web pages load with strange characters

Question

Web pages load with strange characters

I recently noticed a problem that I've been unable to resolve. When using Safari, if I go to websites other than Apple, the pages are filled with characters that are unintelligible to me. I can go to the same sites (yahoo, google, etc.) from Firefox and they display fine.

Under Preferences/Appearance, the Default Encoding is set to Western (ISO Latin1), which seems correct based on other systems on the same network that are working correctly.

Any suggestions? This needs to be resolved.

The system is fully current and Cocktail was run within the last day or two. There was no problem immediately after the system updating, but this issue started about a week later, when nothing had been done to the system that I am aware of.

G4 733 Mhz, Mac OS X (10.4.3), 1.25 GB RAM

Posted on Dec 30, 2005 9:01 AM

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Answer 1

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Dec 30, 2005 10:08 AM in response to Mark A Winchester

Mark, Welcome top Apple Discussions !

It sounds like a font or a cache problem to me.
Test Safari after doing each step.
Try these, and get back to us, OK?

1. Empty your cache & History settings via the Safari menu

2. Trash your Icons Folder:
HD>Users>Home>YourName>Library>Safari -->Icons
Restart Safari and a new folder will be automatically regenerated.
(This folder saves favicons of all the sites you visit. Needs cleaning periodically -- or you can change that file's preferences to "Read Only"
rather than "Read & Write." This will keep it from growing in size.)
Restart Safari & Check.

3. Search using Font Book for
Helvetica Fractions and Times Phonetic.
These two fonts often cause problems.
If you have them, either turn them off, or better yet, trash them.

4. Launch Font Book and check all fonts for duplicates. A duplicated font will have a bullet beside the font family and you can resolve duplicates by selecting the font and at the menu bar, go to Edit > Resolve Duplicates.
Do this for each font with a bullet next to it.

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Answer 2

Dec 30, 2005 12:27 PM in response to TildeBee

Thanks for the suggestions. It will be a few days before I am on that machine again, but I will give them a try and report back.

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Answer 3

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Dec 30, 2005 2:38 PM in response to Mark A Winchester

Great, look forward to hearing back from you.

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Answer 4

Jan 11, 2006 7:25 AM in response to TildeBee

Problem solved. It was the fonts creating the problem. We are working this system over, to resolve font issues and the Helvetica Fractions fonts were on as a part of a Helvetica family. When I turned them off in Font Reserve, the pages displayed correctly.

Thanks for the help - I wouldn't have solved in without it!

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Answer 5

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Jan 11, 2006 8:06 AM in response to Mark A Winchester

Mark --
That's great news !
Very happy your problem is solved 🙂

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