[m a d r a]

i know that, as of tiger, this "�" thingie is used to indicate a place on a web-page where safari doesn't recognise a symbol, because the page has either not declared a "charset" or has declared the wrong one - but it's feckin everywhere these days!

anyone know why this is?

where they always there, but safari used a less noticeable symbol previously? [these "�"s really stand out on a page]

did previous versions of safari just cope with it better and "guess" what the mysterious character was?

has the latest version of microshit frontcrap got a bug which causes it to declare charsets incorrectly? - [this would explain the prevalence of the mighty "�" on the kind of shitty corporate and local government websites which have been designed by some 18 year old ****witt with a dell and a copy of frontpage].

[Oisín]

As far as I know, � is only used to display incorrect or unrecognisable characters in UTF.

Have you perchance set Safari to force UTF-8 on any page that doesn't specify its charset? Most of these sites are ISO-8859-1, and if you set your encoding to UTF-8 manually, you'll see �s galore...

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by Oisín

As far as I know, � is only used to display incorrect or unrecognisable characters in UTF.

Have you perchance set Safari to force UTF-8 on any page that doesn't specify its charset? Most of these sites are ISO-8859-1, and if you set your encoding to UTF-8 manually, you'll see �s galore...

yes - i've set UTF as my default encoding. i suppose it's swings and roundabouts, really:

i set UTF as my default, coz i like foreign language characters to display properly, which they don't do if a page is encoded in UTF but not declared as so. safari [by default] assumes it's dealing with ISO-8859-1

then on the other-hand, after changing the default to UTF, i get loads of other characters not displaying properly on ISO-8859-1 pages which aren't properly declared.

of course none of this would be a problem if all these half-witted self-proclaimed "web-designers" would declare their feckin charsets properly in the first place!

there really ought to be a web design equivalent of a "driving test" of some sort, before some ****witts are allowed near an HTML editor!

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

yes - i've set UTF as my default encoding. i suppose it's swings and roundabouts, really:

i set UTF as my default, coz i like foreign language characters to display properly, which they don't do if a page is encoded in UTF but not declared as so. safari [by default] assumes it's dealing with ISO-8859-1

then on the other-hand, after changing the default to UTF, i get loads of other characters not displaying properly on ISO-8859-1 pages which aren't properly declared.

But the improperly declared ISO-8859-1 pages far outnumber the improperly declared UTF-8 pages. In other words, you'll find yourself switching encodings for specific pages far fewer times if you use ISO-8859-1 as your default encoding.

Besides, ISO-8859-1 doesn't use those annoying, stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb-ish � signs, just stuff like äßÿøäœ, which is less distracting.

of course none of this would be a problem if all these half-witted self-proclaimed "web-designers" would declare their feckin charsets properly in the first place!

there really ought to be a web design equivalent of a "driving test" of some sort, before some ****witts are allowed near an HTML editor!

Amen, bruvva, Amen!

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by Oisín

But the improperly declared ISO-8859-1 pages far outnumber the improperly declared UTF-8 pages. In other words, you'll find yourself switching encodings for specific pages far fewer times if you use ISO-8859-1 as your default encoding....

yeah - you're right. i must have had a logic bypass somewhere along the way