This depends on:
o Your computer's Regional and Language options (as set in Windows
Control Panel)
o Your current HTML encoding (as set in FrontPage File, Properties,
Language, HTML Encoding).
o The browser's Language settings.
o The font files on the visitor's computer.
On my computer, with Regional and Language options set to English (United
States) and the page's HTML encoding set to US/Western European (Windows), I
have no £ key but typing 163 on the alt keypad while holding down Alt
simulates one, and I get a £ character in the Web page. That's because the
ASCII code for £ is 163.
Note, however, that 163 is an 8-bit value (A3 in hex), and that its
appearance therefore varies depending on the language settings or font files
on the visitor's computer. Languages like Russian, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic
typically assign their own unique characters to ASCII codes 128-255.
This is the reason that characters like 163 sometimes come out as question
marks. The browser (or whatever program) is either limiting itself to 7-bit
ASCII (0-127) or isn't sure what character set to use for codes 128-255. It's
also possible that the font file doesn't contain a character for ASCII 163.
To avoid this problem, you should use the £ entity in your HTML rather than
the £ character.
Now, I imagine you saying, isn't there some way to make FrontPage insert £
when I press the £ key or specify £ under Insert Symbol? Well, yes, you just
have to tell FrontPage to compose the page using a 7-bit character set. For
me, that means choosing Page, Properties, Language, and then changing Save
The Document As from US/Western European (Windows) to US (ASCII). However, if
your starting language settings are different, you may need to experiment
with this a bit.
To change the default encoding for all new pages, choose Tools, Site
Settings, Language, and modify the Default Page Encoding drop down list.
To change all existing page in a site, make sure the <head> section of each
page contains exactly one Content-Type content= meta-tag, and that it
specifies the encoding you want. For me, that was:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
rather than the original:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
Jim Buyens
Microsoft MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
o--> Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition: Build a Web Site
Now!
o--> Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out
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o--> Faster Smarter Beginning Programming
