The information in this article applies to:
SYMPTOMSA UNICODE HTML page that include a Byte Order Mark will display garbage characters when displayed in Internet Explorer 4.0 and 4.01. If the UNICODE HTML page is in Big-Endian order then the viewed source of the page will also contain garbage characters, primarily a black box character. CAUSEInternet Explorer 4.0X does not support the use of Byte Order Marks in UNICODE HTML files. RESOLUTIONThe only resolution at this time is to normalize and strip Byte Order Marks from UNICODE HTML files before display in Internet Explorer 4.0 or 4.01. Normalization requires that all UNICODE characters in an HTML file be in Little-Endian format, least significant byte first. For instance, in Big- Endian format, the left angle bracket UNICODE character would appear as 00 3C in a binary dump. This character would need to be byte swapped to 3C 00, Little-Endian format, before being processed and displayed by Internet Explorer. STATUSMicrosoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This bug was corrected in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. MORE INFORMATION
The UNICODE Specification Version 2.0 describes a "Byte Order Mark" in
section 2.4, but does not insist on its use. According to the
specification, the byte sequence FE FF at the beginning of a file indicates
that the following characters are probably UNICODE, normalized for the
memory architecture of the current machine. If the byte sequence FF FE is
found at the beginning of a file it indicates that the remaining bytes are
not normalized and should be byte swapped before use.
REFERENCESFor additional information, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q102025 Explanation of Big Endian and Little Endian ArchitectureThe UNICODE Standard, Version 2.0, The Unicode Consortium Additional query words: UNICODE HTML ENDIAN
Keywords : kbhtml kbIE400bug kbIE401bug kbIE401sp1bug kbIE500fix |
Last Reviewed: April 8, 1999 © 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use. |