Safari and Text Display

[wsragan]

I've been using Safari 1.2.4 for about three months with 10.3 and I like many of the features. However, yesterday I swore off ever using it again after experiening a repeated problem with text display. About every other day, the text on a web page will display in something that looks like Cryillic. It's very intermittent. Yesterday, a page displayed fine, but the text printed out as Cyrillic or jibberish.

Anyone else encountered this problem?

[lZakl]

Hello wsragan, and welcome to WW!

One question: If you log in as a different user does this still happen?

The reason I ask, is that logging in as a different user is a great tool to determin the origin of a problem with Macs. If you logged in as a different user, and that solved the problem, that probably means that appplications preference file for that user is acting up or is corrupt. If it still happens under the 'new' user, that may indicate a system-wide problem.

Try this and us know what you find :0)

-- Zak

[wsragan]

I set up a new account and logged in, but it didn't help. I did learn something about setting up accounts, though. Thanks.

Would it make a difference if I didn't delete the original (administrator) account?

[gardenguy]

In your Safari preferences under Appearance do you have a 'useful' Default Encoding. I have found that if the thing you are browsing doesn't bother to define it's encoding AND my Default is wacky, then I get similar results.

[lZakl]

No! Don't delete the admin account, or you'll be repairing permissions, and alll kind of other junk! lol

Go into the preferences panel in Safari, and change the font, to something other than Times 16. Move to something like Helvetica or Arial, and see what happens. I know that Safari has had problems with Times in the past displaying correctly... Do this and see if it still happens.

(Sorry, I am taking a jump here, I was hoping it would have been ok in the other account!)

-- Zak

[whoisgregg]

This happens to me on some Google sections (Adwords/Adsense) because they screw up the geolocation and serve me a different language. Is it only certain sites or is it inconsistently inconsistent? :)

[jamesa]

Could be a corrupt font.

[andy_boyd]

whoisgregg ... same thing here.

Sometimes I'm redirected to a Chinese language version!

[wsragan]

On closer inspection, it's not cryillic. It's just jibberish. A corrupt font is a possibility, but it's very intermittent. Maybe the flu?

Thanks for the input. When it's resolved, I'll try to post the cause and we can think up a prize for the winner.

[pixel ranger]

I've recently had the same problem. I think it has more to do with text encoding than anythng else.

Especially if you've been playing around with learning CSS, XML and such and have used BBedit or similar tools which allow different encodings to be set.

After getting into DreamweaverMX and GoLive, I've been dealing with Chinese clients and their stuff is sometimes encoded differently.

I was wondering if somehow Safari is just having a cache problem. So, I emptied the cache and Reset Safari (both under the Safari menu) and I haven't had the problem since.