Bad interface under Firefox without custom fonts

[Dupond]

Hello,

First of all thanks for this really great addon !

In order to reduce my browser's fingerprint (since we know that custom fonts are a way to target a specific browser, e.g. Panopticlick has a "System fonts" detection code), I use these parameters in my Firefox :

• "browser.display.use_document_fonts" is set to "0" ;
• "gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled" is set to "false".

uMatrix's interface is then unusable : the icons are replaced with big and strange (more or less chinese-like) letters.

In order to fix this, would it be possible to use icons instead of custom fonts inside of the interface ?

Best regards, Dupond

[0xBRM]

@Dupond you can disable flash based font enumeration in the mms.cfg file, by adding DisableDeviceFontEnumeration = 1.

[luxoflux]

@CrisBRM Well that's handy, thanks for the tip.

[Dupond]

@CrisBRM Thanx for that, I've followed your advice. Is this workaround enough to close this issue, or do you guys think I should stay it opened waiting for an answer from gorhill ?

[gorhill]

There is a similar issue for uBlock.

I tried using a data: URI for the Font Awsome font file but that did not work.

Using fonts is really a huge time savers (easy to change, CSS styling), I won't ever go back to pixel-based icons. There is an issue on Firefox side to address fonts used as set of icons, but unclear if and when this would be resolved. I am not too warm at the idea of converting all to SVG, that would add some work overhead any time I want to change/select an icon -- but maybe I won't have choice.

[luxoflux]

So a few things of note:

• Adding DisableDeviceFontEnumeration=1 to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg disables Flash enumeration.
• Flash-based detection can only work if you allow scripts, and the Flash plugin (i.e., you should set click-to-play).
• There's still another detection technique that uses CSS and doesn't require Flash, but will not work without javascript.
• Personal opinion: using only document fonts ruins the user experience more than it's worth.

[wsldankers]

Strange thing is, on the 3 PC's where I use Firefox with uMatrix and use_document_fonts=0, only one has problems displaying the buttons. The other two are fine. I have no idea what the difference is, but if someone knows where to look… (I tried to diff the prefs.js files but the output was too much).

[gorhill]

only one has problems displaying the buttons

Firefox version for that one? See http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/21/firefox-41-mozilla-modifies-how-icon-fonts-are-handled-by-the-browser/.

[wsldankers]

All three are version 41. I compared the settings as mentioned by that article but they seem to be identical. But perhaps this is just a local issue; if firefox indeed has a workaround for icon fonts, it may be that this bug can simply be closed.

[grumpygeek]

uMatrix 0.9.3.6, Pale Moon 27.0.3 (also same in latest unstable build), Win 8.1

browser.display.use_document_fonts = 0 and the font icons are OK in uMatrix with gfx enabled BUT the setting recommended in the uBlock issue, no remote fonts, will not save in uMatrix rules. I confirmed that other changes would save. Unless I'm missing something, this is not fully resolved for pre-41 Firefox (PM 27 is based on FF 38). Before asking PM developer if he can add a fix in the browser, is there anything I can do for uMatrix similar to the uBlock solution?

[wsldankers]

Managed to fix it by resetting the (Ubuntu) fontconfig config to its defaults. YMMV

[grumpygeek]

No pref in PM with "fontconfig" or "font.config" or "font_config" I'm on Windows, so if you mean an OS setting, that's not likely to help Also, I checked Waterfox 50, and same problem is there too. I can live without the font icons, it just looks goofy. EDIT: I hope you weren't just referring to gfx.downloadable.fonts.enabled, because obviously it works with that set to default (=true), but that was the undesired setting.

[wsldankers]

Yes, I referred to https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/ which is basically a linux OS component. It solved the problem for me, it may solve the problem for others. I'm sorry to hear it didn't solve it for you but I guess that's what YMMV means.

[berkley4]

I believe this issue is solvable, at least on nix systems, by installing fontawesome-webfont.ttf locally. I've put this file in /usr/local/share/fonts/font-awesome/ and then run fc-cache -fv. Make sure the directory has 0755 access permissions, and the file 0644.

You can find the above ttf file here - https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/tree/master/fonts

[grumpygeek]

Yes, it worked for me. Thanks. The first link says ttf but is to a html page, then the link on that 2nd page is the actual file (click download button). Once downloaded, dbl-click file, click install button in font viewer (this is for Windows).