Re: do all browsers support UTF-8 encoding???

From: addison@inter-locale.com
Date: Wed Oct 04 2000 - 12:45:13 EDT


Hi Sandeep,

Maybe this wasn't clear, but...

IE 2,3,4.x and Netscape 2, 3, and 4.x will not display Chinese characters
using the UTF-8 encoding as installed. They set the font for the UTF-8
encoding to "Times New Roman" and therefore display black squares (the
"empty glyph") for all Chinese characters.

A lot of us think that you should not send UTF-8 to the browser if you are
concerned about having large numbers of people with older browser versions
(and cannot ensure that they all set the font to something more
approprite, i.e. in a controlled environment such as an intranet). This
appears to be your case.

Short story:

Work in Unicode (your choice, UTF-8 or UTF-16) at the server.
Send UTF-8 to "modern" browsers (IE 5.x, NN 6.x).
Send legacy encodings (such as Big5) to older browsers.
Send UTF-8 to browsers serving languages that are compatible with UTF-8
(Latin script languages in Western and Central Europe mostly).

Regards,

Addison

===========================================================
Addison P. Phillips Principal Consultant
Inter-Locale LLC http://www.inter-locale.com
Los Gatos, CA, USA mailto:addison@inter-locale.com

+1 408.210.3569 (mobile) +1 408.904.4762 (fax)
===========================================================
Globalization Engineering & Consulting Services

On Wed, 4 Oct 2000, Sandeep Krishna wrote:

> hi guys!!
>
> can someone tell me whether all browsers (atleast IE 2,3.0 and Netscape...) support encoding/deocding on UTF-8....
>
> and also, can there be an instance of browser (say a primitave version of a Chinese Netscape) that supports Big 5 encoding but not UTF-8.
> THis info. is crucial as i expect all users (of the site) to be capable of using only UTF-8 encoding.......
> so if there is a user whose browser doesnt support UTF-8 or it supports Big 5 but not UTF-8 then this is trouble..........
>
> anyone with some idea on this issue.......
>
> regards,
>
> Sandeep
>
>
> ***********************************************************************************************
> SANDEEP KRISHNA
> Member Technical Staff (Priceline.com)
> H.C.L. Technologies Limited
> A-1 C&D, Sector -16, NOIDA, UP, India.
> Ph: 91-11-91-4516321 (extn. 1062)
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>
>
> ~Don't frown, because you never know who's falling in love with your smile!~
>



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