foreign language display issues

[Gary]

Hello,

If any designers have had experience with foreign-language (non-latin font)
display on websites, I would appreciate some input. I have some pages in
hebrew, hindi & gujerati characters that do not display properly on Mac's
using IE 5.2.3. In other languages, the page displayed properly, but the
metatag (ie <title>) was gibberish. This particular Mac had it's IE pref's
updated to include font support for those specific languages. This may be a
minor share of user-demographics, but it still affects a significant number
of visitors. I've tested the pages on the latest 3 versions of IE, FF &
Opera for PC, and no display problems at all.

Since the language & font display issue is multi-dimensional and complex
problem, I don't expect any easy answers, but I thought that since the
problem seems to apply to a narrow band of platform/browser users, that
there might be a simple workaround for that particular user group.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to try secondary browsers on the Mac.

In other enquiries I've posted, I've had answers and opinions that point to
a large number of possible variables, from fonts installed on visitor's
computer systems, browser font support on users systems, to <lang> tags,
proper css, proper char coding with , and on and on.

I'd appreciate any input from those familiar with localization issues on
various platforms & browsers.

thanks....

Gary

 

[Nikita the Spider]

Hello,

If any designers have had experience with foreign-language (non-latin font)
display on websites, I would appreciate some input. I have some pages in
hebrew, hindi & gujerati characters that do not display properly on Mac's
using IE 5.2.3. In other languages, the page displayed properly, but the
metatag (ie <title>) was gibberish. This particular Mac had it's IE pref's
updated to include font support for those specific languages. This may be a
minor share of user-demographics, but it still affects a significant number
of visitors. I've tested the pages on the latest 3 versions of IE, FF &
Opera for PC, and no display problems at all.

Since the language & font display issue is multi-dimensional and complex
problem, I don't expect any easy answers, but I thought that since the
problem seems to apply to a narrow band of platform/browser users, that
there might be a simple workaround for that particular user group.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to try secondary browsers on the Mac.

In other enquiries I've posted, I've had answers and opinions that point to
a large number of possible variables, from fonts installed on visitor's
computer systems, browser font support on users systems, to <lang> tags,
proper css, proper char coding with , and on and on.

I'd appreciate any input from those familiar with localization issues on
various platforms & browsers.

Gary,
Is your question about IE5.2/Mac, "secondary browsers" (which means?) on
the Mac, or localization issues on various platforms & browsers?

IE 5.2/Mac is a pretty outdated browser, and I don't know that it is
capable of displaying non-Latin text in the browser. It failed to
display Cyrillic for me when other browsers on the same platform had no
trouble. Separate question: do you really have that many people using
it?

Cheers

 

[Toby Inkster]

hebrew, hindi & gujerati characters that do not display properly on Mac's
using IE 5.2.3.

IE 5.2.3 is both ancient and unsupported -- both Microsoft and Apple
recommend against its use:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ie/
| It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent
| web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301018
| Microsoft Internet Explorer doesn't come with Mac OS X 10.4
| Tiger.
| For your Internet surfing needs, we include Safari.

I didn't have a chance to try secondary browsers on the Mac.

Yes you did -- you tried IE.

In other enquiries I've posted, I've had answers and opinions that point to
a large number of possible variables, from fonts installed on visitor's
computer systems, browser font support on users systems, to <lang> tags,
proper css, proper char coding with , and on and on.

My crystal ball is being fitted with a new velvet padded base this week,
so you'll have to post the URL for me.