Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY ·Frontier FiberOp..
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Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 12:37 pm
[FireFox] Why do I see these little question marks ?Here is a small screen shot from a website. Please note the little question marks in the text. I had not seen these using Firefox in a while, but I have seen them in the past. What is the cause and is there a fix ? |
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ZZZZZZZ Premium Member join:2001-05-27 PARADISE |
ZZZZZZZ
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 12:56 pm
What's the website..........those may be links to extra info? |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY ·Frontier FiberOp..
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Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 1:25 pm
said by ZZZZZZZ:What's the website..........those may be links to extra info? No extra info. It is drudgereport.com. But I have seen this on other sites also. |
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darciliciousCyber Librarian Premium Member join:2001-01-02 Forest Grove, OR |
to Racerbob
It's a character encoding issue -- either with your browser and/or their server. On my Firefox, they show up as the funky version of a single quote (the ones that lean a bit, not like this one: ' ). |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY |
Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 2:13 pm
OK...in Internet Explorer, the site looks fine. I did find that character encoding issue when I Googled the issue. |
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to Racerbob
In Firefox, go to View->Character Encoding and let us know what is checked there. You may have this set in your preferences as something not compatible with the site.
Their markup is rather antiquated and I'm going to guess your FF is set to utf-8? They are serving it as Windows-1252 which is strange for this modern age we live in. |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY |
Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 2:27 pm
Yes, set to utf-8. I never mess with that setting. Do you suggest changing it ?
EDIT: Well I did change it and the site looks normal now. |
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SteelyI rise when the sun goes down Premium Member join:2000-10-15 Princeton Junction, NJ |
to howardfine
What *should* the Character Encoding be set to? In the past I've had the same issue as the OP but I see my browser is currently set to Western (Windows-1252). |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY ·Frontier FiberOp..
1 edit |
Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 6:47 pm
I did set mine to that Steely and I am seeing no further issues.
EDIT: I take that back. I did change it, but I see that it has changed back to what it was. Weird. And now I clicked the view button and see it at the 1252 setting. Seems that it wants to switch at random ? |
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47717768 (banned) join:2003-12-08 Birmingham, AL |
to Steely
It should be set to Western (ISO-8859-1). |
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SteelyI rise when the sun goes down Premium Member join:2000-10-15 Princeton Junction, NJ |
Steely
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 7:08 pm
Easy enough to change, but if that's the default, how would it have ended up on a different setting if I (or the OP) never messed with it before? Would an extension change it? |
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47717768 (banned) join:2003-12-08 Birmingham, AL 2 edits |
47717768 (banned)
Member
2013-Jul-28 7:12 pm
It would be in Options - Options - Content tab than Advanced button under Fonts & Colors. |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY ·Frontier FiberOp..
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to 47717768
said by 47717768:It should be set to Western (ISO-8859-1). Mine was set to that there. So does each website have a default and this is why it changes ? |
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47717768 (banned) join:2003-12-08 Birmingham, AL 1 edit |
47717768 (banned)
Member
2013-Jul-28 7:37 pm
No. The websites you are visiting should not matter. Some websites are incomparable with a specific browser. Give me the URL to the website you are trying to access. |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY |
Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 7:47 pm
When I go to Facebook, it changes to UTF-8. At www.drudgereport.com it is Windows-1252. Here it is the same. So it seems to take a default setting at each website. |
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47717768 (banned) join:2003-12-08 Birmingham, AL |
47717768 (banned)
Member
2013-Jul-28 8:05 pm
I am able to access the website you have given link to just fine, but the design of this site looks terrible. Try lunching Firefox in safe mode by going to Help than Restart with Add-ons disabled |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY ·Frontier FiberOp..
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Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 8:14 pm
I do not see what that is going to do for me. The Drudge site looks fine for me and I do not see the little question marks as my example above shows. when I go there. Encoding is at 1252. If I force it back to UTF-8 while there I see some of the little question marks again. Usually his site appears ok to me. Today was the first time that I noticed it happening there. As I said, when I go to Facebook the encoding shows at the other setting.. UTF-8. I have seen this question mark (or other symbols) deal in the past at other websites while using Firefox. |
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47717768 (banned) join:2003-12-08 Birmingham, AL |
47717768 (banned)
Member
2013-Jul-28 8:23 pm
I am sorry, but i do not see a Facebook link on that site. What Safe mode will do is if you are able to view the site just like you wanted to than it could be caused by one of the extensions. If nothing helps i would reinstall Firefox. |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY ·Frontier FiberOp..
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Racerbob
Premium Member
2013-Jul-28 8:52 pm
Thanks Oleg. It is not that much of a nuisance at all, but it raises the question as to how character encoding is handled. I uninstall and reinstall FF a lot on a regular basis. Next week we will see the 23.0 final released and I will once again do a clean install of that. |
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Don't listen to Oleg. He's wrong. Web sites can and do set the character encoding for their site. Part of that evidence you noticed when you saw it change when you visited different sites. A modern web site will use UTF8 but, as I pointed out, drudge does not. All my client sites do.
There's nothing wrong with your browser. Quit futzing with it. |
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47717768 (banned) join:2003-12-08 Birmingham, AL 3 edits |
47717768 (banned)
Member
2013-Jul-28 10:03 pm
said by howardfine:Don't listen to Oleg. He's wrong. Web sites can and do set the character encoding for their site. Part of that evidence you noticed when you saw it change when you visited different sites. A modern web site will use UTF8 but, as I pointed out, drudge does not. All my client sites do.
There's nothing wrong with your browser. Quit futzing with it. So are you saying websites could make changes to your browser settings? The only sites that do that. The ones who contain virus. |
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1 edit |
Didnt say that at all. A site can declare what the character encoding is set in and they should and it gets flagged as an error if you don't. EDIT: this is technical. I don't expect you to understand it. » www.w3.org/International ··· har-enc/ |
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Racerbob Premium Member join:2001-06-24 Webster, NY ·Frontier FiberOp..
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to howardfine
Thank you. It really is nothing that I had paid much attention to in the past. But I have seen question marks and other symbols using Firefox at other sites from time to time. I really never paid attention to character encoding or even raised this issue with anyone before today. I just thought that it was an occasional issue with running the Firefox browser. (indeed it is because I do not see these issues if I visit the same sites using IE or Chrome) |
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47717768 (banned) join:2003-12-08 Birmingham, AL |
to howardfine
I thought that Racerbob was talking about the browser would reset encoding settings in the browser. Anyway here is how this site looks on my end » s13.postimg.org/kbpx0nnn ··· site.png |
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to Racerbob
I believe you can force an encoding in your settings which will cause this issue but then you'd be fighting against the site and there's no reason to do that.
You might enjoy the link in my edited post but probably not. |
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