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 |
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