Safari showing Boxed A's

u need to disable any 3rd party font handlers, like fontexplorer. that will fix it.

I had this exact annoying issue for a long time with font display in Safari (Firefox was fine)... and I think I've finally fixed it.

I also use Suitcase Fusion 3 for my Adobe Creative Suite apps and initially I found that if I reboot in Safe Mode to clear the font cache OR use Suitcase to clear the font case it would provide a very temporary "cure".

I use a lot of fonts mostly managed by Suitcase Fusion 3 and on a hunch I went through the fonts I constantly use and cleared and deleted all the Postscript fonts. Where needed I substituted with OpenType or TrueType fonts.

PostScript is an older font format and I thought it might be an issue.

Happily I can report that while before many web pages, including my banking pages, displayed type as "Keyboard A's", now I have not had a single font issue with any Safari page.

In my case, at least, I believe that not using any PostScript type fonts solved the problem. Use OpenType or TrueType.

This article explains how to fix this issue if you're using Font Agent Pro.

http://knowledgebase.insidersoftware.com/entry/218/

Unfortunately replacing hundreds of my Type 1 fonts aquired over may years will be too costly. I also use Suitcase Fusion for font management but disabling it hasn't had any positive effect. I don't use Font Agent. Any other suggestion will be gratefully welcomed.

What I still don't understand is why Firefox doesn't have this problem. I've also recently noticed font display issues with iCal.

After haunting these forums for years I've come to the opinion that there's no one fix fixes all for any probem. I wish I had a magic pill I could offer for your issue.

There's a lot of posts out there asking "How do I uninstall Lion?". Apart from those who just don't like the look and feel of Lion I don't believe their problem is caused by Lion but rather an issue caused within their unique computing environment. (And, of course, there's Luddites )

With Snow Leopard I had a number of problems in my graphic design environment. With Lion it's almost been problem free, just the boxed A's and a wireless issue, both of which have resolved.

Lion 10.7.2 is on the horizen. Extensis fairly frequently offer updates. I suspect and hope that one of these will solve your problem.

The fix should work for Suitcase as well. The issue is caused because Webkit (the engine under Safari and Chrome 12) now has a "sandbox" feature that allows read only permissions to certain folders, the Suitcase and FontAgent pro folders are not among them. So follow the instructions in this post: http://knowledgebase.insidersoftware.com/entry/218/

But instead of entering the file paths to the FontAgent pro folders, enter the file paths to the Suitcase folders. Just be careful to specify whether the file path you specify is a "subpath" (within the Hard Drive) or a "home-subpath" (within your Home folder). For example:

(home-subpath "/FontAgent Pro Fonts")

(home-subpath "/Library/FontAgent Pro")

(subpath "/Library/FontAgent Pro")

Evidently, this has been fixed with Mac OS X 10.7.1, but I haven't tested that myself yet.

Hope this helps!

AN EASY FIX

I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro and with it, Lion and Safari 5.1. I've been encountering the boxed A's and was searching for a fix. After reading about the font paths I decided to check my /Library/Fonts folder and I had nothing in there. On a whim I checked out the folder above called FontCollections and there were 6 files there with the extension .collection. I went ahead and moved all 6 of the files to my /Library/Fonts folder, restarted Safari and problem solved! I have no idea what the .collection files are (one of them being "web.collection") but it has cleared up my problem.

WOW! Thanks kstrujillo, I went to /Library/ but didn't have a folder called FontCollections as described. Instead I saw a folder called Fonts Disabled containing a few fonts which were already in the Fonts folder expect Verdana which I've always suspected to be the cause of the boxed A's in my case. I moved Verdana back into the Fonts folder and BAM, all A's dissappeared as if by magic!

I've read several complex sounding tips to resolve this issue but simply restoring Verdana back into the /Lirary/Fonts folder appear to have resolved it.

Moving the Verdana font into the /Library/Fonts folder will definitely solve the issue, because it's one of the folders that Webkit has Read/Write access to. You'll also need to move other commonly used website fonts into the folder, such as Times. Some people (graphic designers and printers) prefer to not keep any fonts within the Home Library and Main Library fonts folders and instead manage them wtih a dedicated font manager. In this case, the best way to fix the problem is to edit the "com.apple.WebProcess.sb" file as I described in an earlier post.

Alas, the dreaded A's are back with a vengeance 😟. It appears the fix described above was temporary. Looks like there's probably something else causing it.

I am using Font Fusion and I had the same problem.

I fixed it, by chance, by trashing the font caches. This is an option in Font Fusion. Not sure how to do it without Fusion.

Also recommend updating to the lastest version of Fusion.

One more thing...

After trashing the font cache, reboot your system.