Character Set Recognition

Microsoft® Internet Explorer uses the character set specified for a document to determine how to translate the bytes in the document into characters on the screen or on paper. By default, Internet Explorer uses the character set specified in the HTTP content type returned by the server to determine this translation. If this parameter is not given, Internet Explorer uses the character set specified by the META element in the document. It uses the user's preferences if no META element is given.

You can use the META element to explicitly set the character set for a document. In this case, you set the HTTP-EQUIV= attribute to "Content-Type" and specify a character set identifier in the CONTENT= attribute. For example, the following META element identifies windows-1251 as the character set for the document.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type"
  CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=windows-1251">

As long as you place the META element before the BODY element, it affects the whole document, including the TITLE element. For clarity, it should appear as the first element after HEAD so that all readers know the encoding before the first element that can be displayed is parsed. Note that the META element applies to the document containing it. This means, for example, that a compound document (a document consisting of two or more documents in a set of frames) can use different character sets in different frames.

The following table contains information concerning the character sets supported by Internet Explorer 5. The information provided is:

Display Name — the name used to refer to the character set.
Preferred Charset ID — the most common identifier used to set character sets in Internet Explorer. For example, in the previous code sample windows-1251 is the Charset ID.
Additional Aliases — other identifiers that may be used to set character sets.
MLang Code Pages — numeric value of the code pages used by the Internet Explorer MLang API.
Supported by Version — the versions of Internet Explorer that support the listed character sets.
Note CS indicates that the version of Internet Explorer must support complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Thai.

Charsets in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5

Display Name	Preferred Charset ID	Additional Aliases	MLang Code Page	Supported by Versions
Arabic ASMO-708	ASMO-708		708	4CS, 5
Arabic (DOS)	DOS-720		720	4CS, 5
Arabic (ISO)	iso-8859-6	ISO_8859-6:1987, iso-ir-127, ISO_8859-6, ECMA-114, arabic, csISOLatinArabic	28596	4CS, 5
Arabic (Windows)	windows-1256		1256	4CS, 5
Baltic (ISO)	iso-8859-4	csISOLatin4, iso-ir-110, ISO_8859-4, ISO_8859-4:1988, l4, latin4	28594	4, 5
Baltic (Windows)	Windows-1257		1257	4, 5
Central European (DOS)	ibm852	cp852	852	4, 5
Central European (ISO)	iso-8859-2	csISOLatin2, iso-ir-101, iso8859-2, iso_8859-2, iso_8859-2:1987, l2, latin2	28592	3, 4, 5
Central European (Windows)	windows-1250	x-cp1250	1250	3, 4, 5
Chinese Simplified (GB2312)	gb2312	chinese, csGB2312, csISO58GB23128, GB2312, GBK, GB_2312-80, iso-ir-58	936	3, 4, 5
Chinese Simplified (HZ)	hz-gb-2312		52936	4, 5
Chinese Traditional	big5	csbig5, x-x-big5	950	3, 4, 5
Cyrillic (DOS)	cp866	ibm866	866	4, 5
Cyrillic (ISO)	iso-8859-5	csISOLatinCyrillic, cyrillic, iso-ir-144, ISO_8859-5, ISO_8859-5:1988	28595	4, 5
Cyrillic (KOI8-R)	koi8-r	csKOI8R, koi	20866	3, 4, 5
Cyrillic (Windows)	windows-1251	x-cp1251	1251	3, 4, 5
Greek (ISO)	iso-8859-7	csISOLatinGreek, ECMA-118, ELOT_928, greek, greek8, iso-ir-126, ISO_8859-7, ISO_8859-7:1987	28597	3, 4, 5
Greek (Windows)	Windows-1253	windows-1253	1253	5
Hebrew (DOS)	DOS-862		862	4CS, 5
Hebrew (ISO)	iso-8859-8	csISOLatinHebrew, hebrew, iso-ir-138, ISO_8859-8, visual, ISO-8859-8 Visual	28598	4CS, 5
Hebrew (Windows)	windows-1255	logical, ISO_8859-8:1988, iso-ir-138	1255	3CS, 4CS, 5
Japanese (JIS)	iso-2022-jp	csISO2022JP	50220	4, 5
Japanese (JIS-Allow 1-byte Kana)	csISO2022JP	iso-2022-jp	50221	4, 5
Japanese (JIS-Allow 1-byte Kana - SO/SI)	iso-2022-jp	csISO2022JP	50222	3, 4, 5
Japanese (EUC)	euc-jp	csEUCPkdFmtJapanese, Extended_UNIX_Code_Packed_ Format_for_Japanese, x-euc, x-euc-jp	51932	3, 4, 5
Japanese (Shift-JIS)	shift_jis	csShiftJIS, csWindows31J, ms_Kanji, shift-jis, x-ms-cp932, x-sjis	932	3, 4, 5
Korean	ks_c_5601-1987	csKSC56011987, euc-kr, korean, ks_c_5601	949	3, 4, 5
Korean (ISO)	iso-2022-kr	csISO2022KR	50225	3, 4, 5
Latin 3 (ISO)	iso-8859-3		28593	4, 5
Thai (Windows)	iso-8859-11	windows-874	874	3, 4, 5
Turkish (Windows)	Windows-1254	windows-1254	1254	3, 4, 5
Turkish (ISO)	iso-8859-9	csISOLatin5, ISO_8859-9, ISO_8859-9:1989, iso-ir-148, l5, latin5	28599	3, 4, 5
Ukrainian (KOI8-U)	koi8-u		21866	4, 5
Unicode (UTF-7)	utf-7	csUnicode11UTF7, unicode-1-1-utf-7, x-unicode-2-0-utf-7	65000	4, 5
Unicode (UFT-8)	utf-8	unicode-1-1-utf-8, unicode-2-0-utf-8, x-unicode-2-0-utf-8	65001	4, 5
Vietnamese (Windows)	windows-1258		1258	3, 4, 5
Western European (Windows)	Windows-1252		1252	5
Western European (ISO)	iso-8859-1	ANSI_X3.4-1968, ANSI_X3.4-1986, ascii, cp367, cp819, csASCII, IBM367, ibm819, iso-ir-100, iso-ir-6, ISO646-US, iso8859-1, ISO_646.irv:1991, iso_8859-1, iso_8859-1:1987, latin1, us, us-ascii, x-ansi	1252	3, 4, 5

Nonstandard Charsets with Special Meaning Inside Internet Explorer and MLang

These character sets are not to be used for labeling documents.

Display Name	Preferred Charset ID	Additional Aliases	MLang Code Page	Supported by Versions
Japanese (Auto Select)	_autodetect		50932	3, 4, 5
Korean (Auto Select)	_autodetect_kr		50949	4, 5
Unicode	unicode		1200	4, 5
Unicode (BigEndian)	unicodeFEFF		1201	4, 5
User Defined	x-user-defined		50000	4, 5