Thai font in Firefox 3

A week after Firefox 3 has been released, I notice that I have a Thai language problem with some websites such as mhafai.com, dailygizmo.wordpress.com. I have never tried Firefox 3 until it is final, so I didn't know how to deal with it. I tried to do some configuration but the result didn't meet my expectation. I quickly searched with Google and found a solution. The problem font is called 'Lucida Grande', which is Mac's font, it doesn't display correctly for Thai symbols.


First solution, I found it by configuring somethings in Firefox's Setting. This one will force Firefox 3 to display all web pages according to our chosen font. The following step shows how to do so.

• In the menu bar click Tools (Alt + T) -> Options...
• Select Content Tab. Then in fonts & colors region, select Advanced..
• Finally, uncheck "allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selection above" then OK.

The problem with this solution is that all pages will render with your selected font which in my opinion is not nice.

Second solution, I get this one from the internet^[1]. It is very easy, just delete the font from the system and Firefox will use default font for that page.

• Go to Windows Control Panel -> Fonts
• Find and Delete "Lucida Grande.ttf" and "Lucida Grande Bold.ttf"

What I don't like about this one is you will not be able to render pages with "Lucida Grande" (oh!, I am quite a perfectionist). It will use default font for instead of "Lucida Grande" in English and Thai.

Final solution, I come up with the solution when I surf internet on Mac OS X with Firefox 3. I noticed that a problem website rendered correctly in Mac. Therefore, "Lucida Grande" font in Mac must differ from Windows. Fortunatly, I had to port fonts from Mac to Windows for my aunt about a month ago and I now know the way how to do that.

• Copy "LucidaGrande.dfont" in /Systems/Library/Fonts (Mac OS X 10.5) to Windows
• Convert dfont to ttf. You can use a program like Crossfont^[2] which has 15-days trial period.
• Find and Replace (Copy&Paste) "Lucida Grande.ttf" and "Lucida Grande Bold.ttf" in Control Panel -> Fonts with Mac's Font.

The last solution provide you with correct Thai font display and also preserve rendering "Lucida Grande" in English correctly.

Resources:
^[1] - http://www.thaicyberpoint.com/ford/blog/id/520/
^[2] - Crossfont

Firefox 3, One day later

I haven't post new entry for a month. How the lazy guy I am. Actually, the main reason for being indolence is because my current life situation. My daily jobs are only reading, listening, speaking, and typing English for TOEFL, How boring! However, I finally find some time to blog.

After the Download Day for Firefox3 has started, there are more than eight million downloads in 24 hours. Amazing! And total number is still going while I am blogging. Mozilla team tries to make the world record for the most downloaded program "Firefox3" in 24 hours. Due to this Guinness World Record competition, I helped them download 3 times: one for my notebook, one for my desktop, and one for my girlfriend's. For the record, when I am blogging this post, Firefox2 has been downloaded about 500 millions times. I eagerly wait to see how far Firefox3 will go.

This picture was captured on 1:37am 19 Jun 2008 (+0700) from Spread Firefox^[1]

Unfortunately, Thailand has only about 26,000 counts for this record. In comparison to internet users in Thailand (2007) ^[2], there is around 0.20%, I think it is very little number. Although there might be possible that more Thai people use Firefox, but participation in world events is also important. One reason I can come up with is because not many Thai people are in technology field. They are not frequently update themselves with the IT news because it is not their interested and not involved to their work. They will know the stories when the news was reported in Thai media such as television, newspaper, or newspaper website. Another reason is because they don't use Firefox. The question I was frequently asked when persuading someone to use Firefox is why he or she has to change while Internet Explorer is working fine. There are many advantage that Firefox has over IE ,but if the sheep is still fine why we have to build the fence. Last reason that I think it is also reasonable is because of enthusiasm. Thai people are not eager to participate in open source software because they are many illegal softwares available here.

If I am not wrong, the pledge for downloading Firefox is only two millions. But the real downloads is quite fantastic. However, if you help download Firefox3 don't forget to give yourself a certification. here

Resources:
^[1] - Download Day 2008 - Spread Firefox
^[2] - Thailand Internet User Statistics - Nectec