Firefox Failure (UPDATE)

So, I closed out my browser and shut down my computer yesterday morning as I usually do before heading off to work When I came home and fired my laptop up and opened my favorite browser, I got the familiar 'Installing Updates' dialog for a few seconds and them Firefox popped up, only something was off....


At first, I couldn't quite put my finger on it but, after using the browser for a few minutes, I finally realized what was not quite right about what I was seeing; IT WAS HUGE! After checking all the settings I could think of (zoom level, default font size) and finding everything as I expected it, I decided to fire up Chrome to verify I wasn't just going insane.

Not. Insane.

So, off to my favorite troubleshooting tool I went (http://www.google.com) and I searched for "Firefox update resolution change" which led me to a WONDERFUL thread on the mozillaZine forums (new firefox update caused weird browser resolution) that contained a magic post by member rais with the following information (paraphrased and annotated by me):

(if running Firefox 22)

1. Enter about:config in the Awesome Bar (address bar) and press Enter. If you receive a warning about voiding your warranty, it's OK, just click through it.
2. In the Search box, type rpx to find the layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting.
3. Right-click the setting and select Modify (or double-click the setting) to reveal the Enter string value dialog box.
4. Enter 1.0 in the text box and press OK, you'll see the changes instantly

So, my thanks to rais and the mozillaZine forums for providing this answer as this problem was slowly driving me nuts and I hope this post is helpful to anyone else who may experience this issue.

And to Mozilla, PLEASE FIX WHATEVER IT IS THAT CAUSED THIS IN YOUR NEXT UPDATE!!

UPDATE: After some further research, I've found out that this change was implemented to be more in line with Windows font sizing. In fact, I was forced to look into it further when I opened up IE (on Windows 8) and noticed that its content was also quite large.

So... The easy answer is turn your font size down (it's defaulted to 125% on Windows 8) if you don't like the look of your browsers.

P.S. Chrome has not followed suite with font size / DPI settings as of yet so it is unaffected by all of this as far as I know.