Garbled Text in Wordpress Comments Menu

Garbled Text in WordPress Comments Menu

7 August, 2010 - 07:00 AM - 11 Comments

I found it quite shocking that when I went to my WordPress comments tab on my WordPress 3.1 installation I saw that the "In Response To" column on my comments screen had completely garbled text and I couldn’t figure out if this was normal or not.

I checked all seven of the blogs that I administrate and all have the same garbled text for the "In Reply To" and since there appears to be some meaning to the algorithm (it is identical for all comments on the same post, I think there is some meaning behind it).

I found this was only happening for my 3 blogs (JustinGermino.com, WandererThoughts.com and DragonBlogger.com) but didn’t appear to happen for my wife’s blogs. I immediately started thinking that my WordPress accounts may have been hacked, or one of my plugins was malfunctioning.

Turns out, this was only happening in Google Chrome, when I loaded my Comments tab in IE 7, IE 8, Opera or Firefox, the proper Post Title displayed just fin in the "In Response To" column.

Then I decided to play around more with Chrome and found that when I shifted font sizes (control plus scroll wheel on mouse) it would show the proper In Response To post titles if I went a font size up or down.

So as it turns out there appears to be some sort of bug in Google Chrome when displaying text at a certain size in WordPress. I was not able to reproduce it all the time, but I could only at certain font sizes at my own sites.

I am glad this wasn’t a hack or bug in WordPress and instead an anomaly of Google Chrome. So if you see some garbled text in your Google Chrome browser try switching font size to see if it solves the problem.

-Dragon Blogger

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Written by Justin Germino (1518 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

Follow Justin Germino on Twitter @dragonblogger

Luqman @ Domain name registration

Thanks for the information, it is noted. I think it should be reported to Google.

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Laura@Banking Rates

Very interesting... and cool that you found a solution too. I really like Google Chrome and haven't really had any display issues with it. I think this is the first real issue I've heard. Do you like it?

dragonblogger

I use chrome exclusively now for almost everything.

Gomez@AutoGlass Repair

I've been banging my head against the wall on this problem... on a test blog, it was driving me crazy. Deactivating plug-ins. Reactivating. Nothing working.

Thank you!

Marty @ New gadgetz

Weird problem, I've tested it myself and it shows ok in Chrome

Dean Saliba

Although this has never happened to me I have suffered a problem which is making my head hurt.

When clicked all the pages on my blog say the name of a blog post I have written instead of the name of the page.

Removed all plugins, still happens. Tried changing themes, still happens.

When I finally find out what is causing this I shall be jumping aorund like a loon! :D

This has to be caused by something in the theme or plugins, it means your META TITLE is being set to something static. Check your header.php to see if anything is setting META TITLE

Himanshu

i face this when i view in mozilla firefox. i thought that they are spams. will check by changing fonts.

Sourav @ Tech N Blogging

I am using Chrome and I haven't faced this, but will definitely remember this.
Btw, thanks for that Ctrl+mouse wheel trick to change font size. It was not known to me.

Oh, that was an old one to increase/decrease font size, glad you found it helpful.

BlazingMinds

I'll have to keep this in mind if it ever happens on my WP blog, I'm using Chrome 98% of the time now, I can get much more done in a shorter space of time than when I was using FireFox ;)