What is Unicode?
Unicode is often referred to as a "super character set." As the Internet becomes more global, it becomes necessary to represent a wider range of languages across Web sites, sometimes representing multiple languages on a Web page. Unicode supports all of the world's major languages. The Unicode Standard has been adopted by most major software vendors and it is supported by both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.
Many more companies do rely on Unicode "behind the scenes" than on the home pages of their Web sites. For example, a content database may hold all text for a given Web site in Unicode format; when the content is pulled to the Web server, it is transcoded into the native encoding. But that's a subject for another day.
Is Your Web Site Using Unicode?
To find out if a Web page is using Unicode, simply select the "encoding" feature of your Web browser (as shown below using Internet Explorer):
You may also view the source of the Web page. Look for "charset=utf-8" within the content header at the top of the page.
To learn more about Unicode, visit: