Why am I having Web browser problem? (not browser specific)

In my new X220, I have IE and downloaded Mozilla Firefox (it must be the newest version since I got it straight from Mozilla web site). In both cases:

1. The web page colors are neither the original web site's colors nor my customized colors (whether "use system color" or not, and even though I checked "Allow pages to use their own colors". For example, this very forum's color is just my windows color, even though I unchecked "use system color".

2. In email accounts such as yahoo, Gmail, both have lost many features, such as the little arrows that you click when you want to see older/newer messages, the flags to mark important mails, and so on-- they all became just little square blocks. And this has nothing to do with my email account settings. I have to click on those square blocks based on memory to guess what that button is for!

Does anyone have a clue what's the cause and how to change it? I have display text size (dpi) set to 125% (medium size text), but I doubt this is relevant. Again the problem pertains not just in one particular browser, and not just in one email account.

Any input will be appreciated!

--UPDATE--:
In google Chrome, I have no such problem. Is that chrome cannot coexist with other browsers?

 

It has nothing to do with your hardware.

 

Do you know what's the problem?

 

That sounds like some third-party application has screwed something up.

 

Concerning FireFox: Many, many people are having issues with it because there is a serious memory leak flaw. The longer you are on FF and opening tabs the memory usage will climb to the point of freezing systems. I speak from personal experience. It becomes so bad at times you have to reboot the system from time to time.

I went to Chrome and my issues stopped.

This is not to say that this is your sole issue but try using only Chrome for the next week and see what happens. Please let us know if you experience any more of the same issues with Chrome.

 

Thanks for the input. I have since been using only Chrome (uninstalled Firefox). I have only one issue with Chrome, which seems common and without a solution: When opening a web page with embedded video, instead of showing the video, it displays "Missing Plug-in", even though I have Adobe Flash Player and Java installed. I searched the web and many are having the same problems, but still no real solution.

 

That's typically due to buggy addons. All the tests I've seen of clean profiles don't show any serious issues.

To the OP: regarding the "missing icons" issue (which sounds to me like images not being fetched correctly) is it just GMail and Yahoo Mail that exhibit this problem?

 

Sometimes the CSS/image cache gets corrupted and a force-refresh with Ctrl+F5 fixes it.

Firefox 8 is really lean on RAM.

 

No, it's not about email. If you search the Internet with missing plug-in and Chrome, you'll find that this is a common problem with Chrome. Suggestions have been made as to how to solve it, but most are just guesses and none worked for me. It looks like a problem of Chrome.

 

There's a difference between missing a plug in and being unable to display images.

What you're describing here:

sounds like a failure to load images. That would not happen due to missing a browser plugin.

 

Well I reinstalled the Firefox and the problem is still there! The same thing still happens to both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I have been OK so far only because I used exclusively Chrome. I am very puzzled. As said in my title, this is not a problem with only one particular browser: both Firefox and IE. Only Chrome is OK, but Chrome has its own problem (plugin).

On a web page with links or buttons, many links and buttons are missing or have faint "traces" of them. When I put the mouse cursor over them, some more traces will appear, giving me more hint what button/link it is, so I could click on it.

Does this kind of display problem sound familiar to anyone?