Update: Google Chrome browser fonts problem on Mac OS X

You may have seen my earlier post on this topic here and thought “Yippeee” problem solved!

Well that’s true, if you’re on Mac and your font manager serves one of the standard Web fonts like Arial, then by removing the font from the manager and allowing Chrome to fall through to the version in the system font library you fix the problem (remember that the Chrome security model currently only allows it to read fonts from the standard systems fonts folder).

Unfortunately this does not work for all cases!! For example, if a Web page uses a font like Calibri, such as http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/02/07/FacebookCassandraArchitectureAndDesign.aspx then this font won’t be in your system fonts folder. On the other hand, as in my case, it may be in your font manager.

You can’t delete it from your font manager, because there is no system equivalent

Currently, no obvious fix! // except… I decided Calibri wasn’t that important and disabled it 🙂 anyway

Come on Google sort out the Mac!

Google Chrome browser fonts problem on Mac OS X

Just about everyone in the Web/tech industry now has worked out that Chrome rocks. It rocks so much, that once you use it for a while, any other browser becomes unbearable (I won’t go into the design decisions that make it so much better, but please take it on trust and try using this browser for a while, searching via the address bar, adding extensions etc, if you are not already).

That is, except for some people on Mac OS X, because in some configurations Chrome screws up the display of certain fonts. When this happens, text in the fonts in question are represented by a series of A’s.

Cause: You have a font manager installed, such as Suitcase Fusion, which maintains fonts outside of the Mac OS X fonts folder. If the manager activates a Web font that is also a “system” font, such as Arial or Tahoma, when Chrome Beta requests the font from the system it will be directed to the managed copy. Unfortunately however, Chrome’s security model does not allow it to access and load font files outside of the system fonts folder.

Fix: Carefully go through the fonts in your font manager. Deactivate any copies of Web fonts such as Arial, Tahoma and Georgia (these fonts should already exist in your system fonts anyway). Restart Chrome.