Cryptic rectangles

The small icons on my my Yahoo email page have been replaced by small rectangles containing numbers and letters. In fact the menu bar above the text box that I'm typing this text into has a bunch of these rectangles in it. For example, the rectangle on the far left contains an "F" and an "O" which are positioned above the numbers "3" and "2". When I hover my cursor over the rectangle I get a pop-up message that says "Bold (Ctrl-b)".

 

Possibly coded bots mentioned in the privacy policy?

 

After doing some research I found out that there's a recent trend in website design which is instead of loading icons as icons, as would seem logical, some pea-brain bucking for a promotion came up with the idea to load icons as a font which means you have to have your browser settings set to allow websites to use their own fonts. Some of us have this setting disabled for various practical reasons, such as making it possible to view poorly designed web sites that have ridiculously oversized fonts.

After changing the setting to allowing websites to display their own fonts I am no longer seeing the cryptic rectangles, as they have been replaced with font icons (that look exactly like the former image icons). Now every time I visit a website that uses font icons I have to go into my browser settings and temporarily activate the "allow websites to display their own fonts" setting in order to be able to view the site properly. Then when I'm finished viewing that website I have to go back in and disable the setting.

Every now and then someone comes up with a great new idea in website design that benefits both end user and web designer alike. Using a font to display icons isn't one of those ideas.