Sometimes, CSS unicode characters may not render correctly and appear as jumbled symbols like "â–¾"

Question

Sometimes, CSS unicode characters may not render correctly and appear as jumbled symbols like "â–¾"

https://i.sstatic.net/eGvzJ.jpg

Every now and then, about 1 in every 100 page refreshes, the unicode characters on my page turn into jumbled nonsense (you might need to zoom in to see it clearly). Specifically, the unicode characters are displayed as â–¾. I'm not sure why this is happening or what it means. The affected characters are the sort indicators on the columns, as well as the ticks of the checkboxes.

I am using the DataTables UI library with its bootstrap integration, and these characters come from the dataTables.bootstrap5.css file. There doesn't seem to be any network issue, and the css file is being served to the client when the problem occurs. However, the content of the css file appears corrupted (as shown in the comparison from DevTools inspection in the image).

The backend of the project is built on asp.net core 7, and it's an MVC project. In the head section of the project, I have already declared support for the utf-8 character set:

<meta charset="utf-8" />

I've attempted replacing the arrows in the css with unicode characters like "\f0d8" (which represents a "caret up" symbol), but they just appeared as squares.

Just to clarify, this question does not pertain to code-related issues, so please refrain from flagging it as requiring code.

css asp.net-core unicode datatables bootstrap-5

Answer 1

Answer №1

Below is the solution that successfully resolved the issue in ASP.NET Core 7:

var typeProvider = new FileExtensionContentTypeProvider(); // (to define content type and charset for css responses)
typeProvider.Mappings[".css"] = "text/css; charset=UTF-8";
app.UseStaticFiles(new StaticFileOptions
{
    ContentTypeProvider = typeProvider
});

This adjustment in the static file server middleware ensures that the

Content-Type: text/css; charset=UTF-8

header information is included when delivering static files with a .css extension. Although the content type was previously set correctly, the absence of charset specification caused issues in Google Chrome. By explicitly specifying the charset, the problem was effectively resolved. Appreciation to @Cbroe for providing this solution.

Answer 2

Below is the solution that successfully resolved the issue in ASP.NET Core 7:

var typeProvider = new FileExtensionContentTypeProvider(); // (to define content type and charset for css responses)
typeProvider.Mappings[".css"] = "text/css; charset=UTF-8";
app.UseStaticFiles(new StaticFileOptions
{
    ContentTypeProvider = typeProvider
});

This adjustment in the static file server middleware ensures that the

Content-Type: text/css; charset=UTF-8

header information is included when delivering static files with a .css extension. Although the content type was previously set correctly, the absence of charset specification caused issues in Google Chrome. By explicitly specifying the charset, the problem was effectively resolved. Appreciation to @Cbroe for providing this solution.

Sometimes, CSS unicode characters may not render correctly and appear as jumbled symbols like "â–¾"

Answer №1

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