• Firefox (Fenix) or Fennec on FireOS Display errors on meet.google.com

    From Richmond@dnomhcir@gmx.com to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 11:36:02 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    I have installed Firefox fenix-146.0.1-android-arm64-v8a and fennec_fdroid_1450020 on a FireOS tablet. Both of these don't display
    the page:

    meet.google.com

    properly. There is something wrong with the fonts, or some text from the
    html is displayed which should not be. Is it a font problem? Is there
    some font which can be downloaded? I cannot find any settings available
    for fonts.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Andy Burns@usenet@andyburns.uk to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 11:41:48 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    Richmond wrote:

    Both of these don't display the page:

    meet.google.com

    Is that Hangouts in disguise? Thought it had been killed-off?

    <https://gcemetery.co/google-hangouts/>
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Richmond@dnomhcir@gmx.com to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 12:00:53 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> writes:

    Richmond wrote:

    Both of these don't display the page: meet.google.com

    Is that Hangouts in disguise? Thought it had been killed-off?

    <https://gcemetery.co/google-hangouts/>

    Hangouts was replaced with Duo (I think) and then Duo was replaced with
    Meets, and then Meets, got upgraded to Meets with a different UI.

    I forgot to mention that if you actually have a FireOS tablet you need
    to request the desktop version of the site, otherwise you get taken
    pointlessly to the Google Play store. But Meets does actually work in
    Firefox, Vivaldi, and Chromium (snapshot). These I have tested so far.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From VanguardLH@V@nguard.LH to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 09:50:20 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:

    I have installed Firefox fenix-146.0.1-android-arm64-v8a and fennec_fdroid_1450020 on a FireOS tablet. Both of these don't display
    the page:

    meet.google.com

    properly. There is something wrong with the fonts, or some text from the
    html is displayed which should not be. Is it a font problem? Is there
    some font which can be downloaded? I cannot find any settings available
    for fonts.

    Don't know what "something wrong" might mean. Lots of possibilities.
    Do placeholder characters appear instead of the expected characters?
    That's caused by blocking 3rd-party fonts.

    Font foundaries, of which Google's is the most used, can track where you visited, when, and how often. A site that offloads fonts to a foundary
    has your client fetch them from the foundary. Sites will use
    foundaries, for example, to have icons to indicate what a button or link
    might do when clicked. If you block 3rd-party fonts (aka web fonts), a placeholder is displayed in place of the would-be character from an
    external font source.

    "Don't display the page" makes it sound like you don't get anything.
    There is no content delivered to you, or the HTML is screwed up as to be missing the <body>, or the web doc is heavily Javascripted and the
    scripts at that time generate the web doc content, or other cause to
    prevent you getting anything in the body of the web doc, so you see a
    blank web doc. Yet then you discuss fonts, so you are seeing something.

    3rd-party fonts can be blocked by extensions. For example, uBlock
    Origin has an option to block them. Or you might use some other
    extension that lets you define rules, and one is *$font,third-party.

    Using 3rd-party font foundaries is a privacy issue. A web site could
    store the font set locally at their web server to have them delivered
    from there to you. You are visiting their site, do delivering fonts
    from them doesn't affect your level of privacy. However, sites want to
    offload as much bandwidth to CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) even for
    images and scripts, including having someone else's bandwidth deliver
    fonts to you.

    https://www.ghacks.net/2022/09/17/how-to-block-web-fonts-to-improve-privacy/

    At one time, I had uBlock Origin configured to block 3rd-party fonts.
    Some sites ended up with tons of placeholder characters making it
    difficult to know what action or event an element in the web doc might
    do. My pharmacy is like that: disable 3rd-party fonts, and it's hard to
    know how to navigate their site. I don't visit there often enough to
    memorize that element does what event. I gave up on blocking 3rd-party
    fonts to improve privacy (prevent tracking by font foundaries).

    The above article mentions an about:config setting that will block
    3rd-party fonts: gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled. Default is true.
    False blocks them. No idea what gfx.downloadable_fonts.woff2.enabled
    does (didn't bother to research it). The article also mentions a config setting "Allow pages to choose their own fonts". I recall when I tried
    it that web docs were too often illegible. I didn't have local fonts
    that matched on what the web doc tried to use. Extensions can also
    block web fonts.

    Have you tried creating a new profile in Firefox, and revisit that web
    site? A fresh profile won't have any extensions, and all Firefox
    settings would be at their install-time defaults.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Richmond@dnomhcir@gmx.com to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 16:10:51 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> writes:

    Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:

    I have installed Firefox fenix-146.0.1-android-arm64-v8a and
    fennec_fdroid_1450020 on a FireOS tablet. Both of these don't display
    the page:

    meet.google.com

    properly. There is something wrong with the fonts, or some text from the
    html is displayed which should not be. Is it a font problem? Is there
    some font which can be downloaded? I cannot find any settings available
    for fonts.

    Don't know what "something wrong" might mean. Lots of possibilities.
    Do placeholder characters appear instead of the expected characters?
    That's caused by blocking 3rd-party fonts.

    Font foundaries, of which Google's is the most used, can track where you visited, when, and how often. A site that offloads fonts to a foundary
    has your client fetch them from the foundary. Sites will use
    foundaries, for example, to have icons to indicate what a button or link might do when clicked. If you block 3rd-party fonts (aka web fonts), a placeholder is displayed in place of the would-be character from an
    external font source.

    "Don't display the page" makes it sound like you don't get anything.
    There is no content delivered to you, or the HTML is screwed up as to be missing the <body>, or the web doc is heavily Javascripted and the
    scripts at that time generate the web doc content, or other cause to
    prevent you getting anything in the body of the web doc, so you see a
    blank web doc. Yet then you discuss fonts, so you are seeing something.

    I meant 'didn't display page...properly', and then gave
    details. Unfortunately I split it over a line because I wanted to put
    the url on a line on its own.


    3rd-party fonts can be blocked by extensions. For example, uBlock
    Origin has an option to block them. Or you might use some other
    extension that lets you define rules, and one is *$font,third-party.

    Using 3rd-party font foundaries is a privacy issue. A web site could
    store the font set locally at their web server to have them delivered
    from there to you. You are visiting their site, do delivering fonts
    from them doesn't affect your level of privacy. However, sites want to offload as much bandwidth to CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) even for
    images and scripts, including having someone else's bandwidth deliver
    fonts to you.

    https://www.ghacks.net/2022/09/17/how-to-block-web-fonts-to-improve-privacy/

    At one time, I had uBlock Origin configured to block 3rd-party fonts.
    Some sites ended up with tons of placeholder characters making it
    difficult to know what action or event an element in the web doc might
    do. My pharmacy is like that: disable 3rd-party fonts, and it's hard to
    know how to navigate their site. I don't visit there often enough to memorize that element does what event. I gave up on blocking 3rd-party
    fonts to improve privacy (prevent tracking by font foundaries).

    The above article mentions an about:config setting that will block
    3rd-party fonts: gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled. Default is true.
    False blocks them. No idea what gfx.downloadable_fonts.woff2.enabled
    does (didn't bother to research it). The article also mentions a config setting "Allow pages to choose their own fonts". I recall when I tried
    it that web docs were too often illegible. I didn't have local fonts
    that matched on what the web doc tried to use. Extensions can also
    block web fonts.

    Have you tried creating a new profile in Firefox, and revisit that web
    site? A fresh profile won't have any extensions, and all Firefox
    settings would be at their install-time defaults.

    It is displaying words over the top of words, so that it is not clear
    what the word is. The oddest example is by the input box where it says "keyboard". The menu on the left hand side has the word 'event'
    partially covering the word 'meetings'.

    I checked and downloadable fonts are allowed. The profiles should be all default because these are new installations of Firefox and Fennec.

    I see there is a list of allowed fonts in iconfontsallowlist.

    Privacy isn't much of an issue here as I am using Google Meet, so I have
    to sign in, and so it knows my phone number etc.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Richmond@dnomhcir@gmx.com to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 16:45:10 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    I see now, looking at the site from desktop chromium, that the word
    'keyboard' is a substitute for the image of a keyboard which has come
    from somewhere. There are also calendar and video camera images, or
    pictograms. These are not being displayed properly on the FireOS
    Firefox.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From VanguardLH@V@nguard.LH to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 17:10:17 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:

    It is displaying words over the top of words, so that it is not clear
    what the word is. The oddest example is by the input box where it says "keyboard". The menu on the left hand side has the word 'event'
    partially covering the word 'meetings'.

    Looks like an element alignment issue which is likely due to dev testing
    with the Chromium (Blink) rendering engine, but not with Firefox
    (Gecko).

    Did you check Firefox is NOT configured to override fonts (and their
    sizes) in its settings?

    Are you running the monitor at other than the default (100%) DPI setting
    for text scaling? DPI-aware programs should be capable of working at,
    say, 125% or 150% scaling, but devs may not allocate space around a text
    object to prevent overlap.

    In Firefox, does the site display okay if you switch from the mobile
    version of the site's web pages to its desktop version? For Firefox
    Android, that's under settings -> Site settings -> Request desktop view.
    Sites will design a mobile view that better positions elements in a web
    doc for viewing on a small monitor (the phone screen). Although the
    UserAgent header is deprecated, it still gets used at sites to determine
    if a visiting client should get the mobile or desktop view of their web
    pages. If you modify general.useragent.override in about:config to
    specify a desktop version of Firefox, or use an extension to override
    the UserAgent header sent to the server, you could make Firefox always
    get the desktop version of a site's web pages (assuming the site does
    the detection, and offers mobile and desktop versions of their web
    pages).

    On Firefox, I think, there is a site settings of "always request desktop
    site". Not sure it is always enforced, or what it might do with the
    UserAgent header. If the setting doesn't alter UserAgent, the site
    would still see you're a mobile client. Found a screen shot here that
    someone saved:

    https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMaaQESH7uFTMzVXvU-ExlXiGPnkYGKDdDjSilyZ4Jy5SopukDubeL4fldyfZtoEg?pli=1&key=bkNGcFhQMDJNNlJWdUlzNUdmSXBBMXV2bnI1bDhB


    However, a problem with using the desktop view of web pages is they are
    usually squashed. They were designed for bigger monitors, so on a phone
    the web page gets compacted, and could be difficult to read unless you
    pinch with 2 fingers to expand the display.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From VanguardLH@V@nguard.LH to alt.comp.software.firefox on Fri Dec 19 17:12:20 2025
    From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

    Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:

    I see now, looking at the site from desktop chromium, that the word 'keyboard' is a substitute for the image of a keyboard which has come
    from somewhere. There are also calendar and video camera images, or pictograms. These are not being displayed properly on the FireOS
    Firefox.

    Could be those are external resources that have to get retrieved from
    other than the site you visit. However, you said this was a fresh
    install, so no adblockers that might block those external image
    resources.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2