[dtaylorl]

I'm currently making a website that is mostly in English but also requires some parts to be in Japanese. What is the best way to do this that will be compatible with as many users as possible (I don't want boxes where words should be!)? I've never really worked with non-standard characters before so I'm not even sure where to start.

[bobthecockroach]

Here's a place to start:

Unicode and HTML - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[dtaylorl]

Okay, so in the end does it ultimately depend on whether or not the viewer has a japanese font installed? Is there a way to make it look better than ugly boxes if they don't? What is a good Japanese charset, or is better to use the Japanese characters in unicode (see http://pinyin.info/tools/converter/c...numbers.html)?

[bobthecockroach]

It definitely depends on whether they have a Japanese font installed.

You should almost certainly use Unicode. Unicode is nearly universally supported and should eventually replace all other encodings.

[dtaylorl]

Okay, that's good to know. Is there any way to detect whether or not the proper font is installed and then hide the Japanese if it is not? I'm still getting ugly boxes on some systems.