Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I am seeing the type replaced with an "A" inside a box on multiple websites.
I've rebooted my system and still seeing the same error.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
http://futurejosh.com/downloads/screen1.png
Safari 5.1-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7)
Same problem. I used Font Book to restore fonts to only the approved system set with no luck.
I got a bit anxious about the number of fonts activated on my system so I backed them up and then removed all user installed fonts and deleted my FontExplorerX 2.x and all files associated with it.
I was still having the problem and was unable to empty my trash because of a weird version of Helvetica Neue that was "still in use". I restarted, removed the version of Helvetica Neue and Safari now works fine.
Sorry... I wish I would have screenshot the file name of that version of Helvetica Neue.
I still have the a version of Helvetica Neue that comes with the OS installed and it's activated in Font Book.
This is definitely a bug and Apple will address it in future updates. My advice for those of you who want Safari to work now is to just clean out your fonts (back them up)...and start over.
Hope this helps!
It is a Safari problem. The fonts render perfectly in Firefox (the latest version.) In my machine it is some sort of Helvetica that is displaying incorrectly. Other programs render Helvetica fine.
Kurt
Same problem here. I have Safari 5.0.2 on my Snow Leopard extl HD and that runs and renders the pages correctly, I have the two windows open alongside each other. IT SEEMS A definite BUG in 5.1
The A's come from the font LastResort. It's very common for font cache data to become corrupt when installing one OS over another. Seems to happen to Safari updates on a fairly regular basis, also.
I don't have Lion yet, so can't confirm if the following Terminal command works. It does for Leopard and Snow Leopard.
Close all running applications. From an administrator account, open the Terminal app and enter the following command. You can also copy/paste it from here into the Terminal window:
sudo atsutil databases -remove
This removes all font cache files. Both for the system and all user font cache files. After running the command, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.
Sorry Kurt but that did not work.
Did Terminal give you an error message of an unsupported command, or did it just not solve the issue?
Also (something I need to add to my boilerpate text), on a sudo command, it will ask for your admin password. You need to enter that before it will carry out the command.
I haven't tried the above, although I can only assume it will work. But the font at issue appears to be Arial, and it largely has to do with some sort of conflict between system fonts and FontExplorer. Merely resolving duplicates between Font Explorer and FontBook isn't enough--you have to do that and restart. Once you do that all should be well.
No error in Terminal and it did ask for my admin password, and executed the command. It did not solve the issue.
Please note Safari 5.0.2 running alngside 5.1 on same Mac does not show this problem. Also Firefox also works fine.
If you have Font Explorer and go to: Tools/System Font protection and select "disable," this seems to fix the problem. However, I am not sure that Font Explorer is messing with OS X's system protection feature and if it SHOULD be left off. I click disable and then enable with restore. This fixes the problem until the next restart.
Kurt
Had exactly the same issue...
The solution is to go to Font Explorer X Pro and select "Clean System Font Caches..." from Tools menu. You'll need to enter admin password and restart, but this fixes the problem...
đ
Hmmm - this worked at first, but then a few moments later, when my back was turned - it reverted back to the dreaded A in a box.
Same thing happened when I used Font Explorer to "Clean System Fonts Folders..."
đ
Definitely an issue with font explorer. If you switch it off, and restart, everything is fine. If you then launch Font Explorer - the fonts go bad....
Solution for me was to switch off Helvetica Rounded in Font Explorer.
This will do until Apple fix the bug.
It clearly is a bug, as mentioned above, the same font renders fine in Firefox.
In my version no sytem fonts caches show up in the "clean font cache" tool.
Kurt
Font problems in Safari 5.1 (Lion)
