A few authority sites like http://validator.w3.org suggest that you need to use utf-8 to encode your site but it is hard work (at least by my standards) to get text editors to save it that way. With notepad the default is ansi. Forget one time to specify utf-8 when you are first closing the file, and you won't even know about it, and will have a site with 2 formats. With notepad++ you can set it to utf-8 but it is still tricky.

I really like notepad++ but if you set it to save the format as utf-8 without BOM (saves deleting the first 3 characters of each file after you've uploaded it) it still does not default save most files as utf-8; it reverts back to ansi at every chance and I have to check that every time too.

I think most people just go with ansi and it really doesn't seem to make much difference. I ran a page saved as ansi through the validator on the first line of this post and it validated, even though the head declared "charset=utf-8."

Does anyone else bother saving their sheets (html, css and xml for me) as utf-8, or is this just a pointless concern?

best wishes,
../lloyd

Hi,

It prolly isn't, unless you use chars which need something else than ansi. I've pasted ansi-texts into UTF-8 texts without problem.

I dont bother since i'm using Dreamweaver for my html code - there are many better free editors than notepad ++ that you can use and which are properly using utf8 coding - take netbeans for instance (well this one is much much bigger than notepad++). As for getting all html in same encoding i found batch converting their character set after few editions very usefull, but dont know any english-language which do such thing.

I dont bother since i'm using Dreamweaver for my html code - there are many better free editors than notepad ++ that you can use and which are properly using utf8 coding - take netbeans for instance (well this one is much much bigger than notepad++). As for getting all html in same encoding i found batch converting their character set after few editions very usefull, but dont know any english-language which do such thing.HostBill, did Adobe fix the bug that prevented Dreamweaver from saving documents in UTF-8 format?

I'm a long-time user of Homesite (may it Rest in Peace), and my only complaint about this software was the lack of UTF-8 support. Adobe killed Homesite because they basically fused it into Dreamweaver. I keep using Homesite because it's so lightweight and user-friendly without all that extraneous WYSIWYG stuff, but I've always wondered if Dreamweaver took that UTF-8 bug with it, or whether they ironed that out.

I suppose I could be persuaded to switch to Dreamweaver's Code mode if they have this sorted... ;) Any thoughts?

(FTR, I would LOVE it if they broke out DW Code mode into its own application - I wonder if we could lobby Adobe to make this happen. Bring back (new and improved) Homesite!!)

there are many better free editors than notepad ++ that you can use and which are properly using utf8 coding - take netbeans for instance (well this one is much much bigger than notepad++).

Thanks, I hadn't even heard of this one. The information on their site is all about coding languages and doesn't even mention kiddy stuff like xhtml.

I noticed they have different download bundles and the smallest one is for php (at 26MB) which might be the next one I have to get into. I'd assume that any of the bundles would work with xhtml, css and xml would they? I probably will download this and give it a try. If it handles the utf-8 problem better maybe it has more useful stuff.

Thanks for the info. In the last design forum I asked about this, I didn't get a single bit of useful info. Also, it looks like the_pm also considers utf-8 important so that's good to know. I do appreciate that too. I was starting to wonder if I was the only one out there.

HostBill, did Adobe fix the bug that prevented Dreamweaver from saving documents in UTF-8 format?
Hmm im using very old version, released under Macromedia brand back than - and im not aware of any utf problem.

I noticed they have different download bundles and the smallest one is for php (at 26MB) which might be the next one I have to get into. I'd assume that any of the bundles would work with xhtml, css and xml would they? I probably will download this and give it a try. If it handles the utf-8 problem better maybe it has more useful stuff.
PHP version will suffice - this is really powerfull IDE and comes with number of extension, but in PHP version it have built-in html,css toolbox so it colours syntax properly and comes with code completion with you'll love if you'd never used stuff like that.

PHP version will suffice - this is really powerfull IDE and comes with number of extension, but in PHP version it have built-in html,css toolbox so it colours syntax properly and comes with code completion with you'll love if you'd never used stuff like that.

Well thanks for all the information. that does sound good and I'll start the download right after this post is up.

thanks again,
../lloyd

Hmm im using very old version, released under Macromedia brand back than - and im not aware of any utf problem.Here's the UTF-8 issue from Homesite, FYI - http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/190/tn_19059.html

They discovered it almost 6 years ago, and it never got fixed. Shame about that.

HostBill, did Adobe fix the bug that prevented Dreamweaver from saving documents in UTF-8 format?

I'm a long-time user of Homesite (may it Rest in Peace), and my only complaint about this software was the lack of UTF-8 support. Adobe killed Homesite because they basically fused it into Dreamweaver. I keep using Homesite because it's so lightweight and user-friendly without all that extraneous WYSIWYG stuff, but I've always wondered if Dreamweaver took that UTF-8 bug with it, or whether they ironed that out.

I suppose I could be persuaded to switch to Dreamweaver's Code mode if they have this sorted... ;) Any thoughts?

(FTR, I would LOVE it if they broke out DW Code mode into its own application - I wonder if we could lobby Adobe to make this happen. Bring back (new and improved) Homesite!!)
I have DW CS4, and they still have that bug.
If I don't use any Japanese characters in the document, DW ignores the encoding settings and saves the document in SJIS format.

This becomes a problem when I don't have any actual text in my PHP file, but pulling utf8 Japanese text from a database.

Workaround is, to put a commented Japanese (or any other unicode) text:
//日本語

Quit using DW about 2 months ago, using NetBeans 6.7.1 now and cannot be happier.

Quit using DW about 2 months ago, using NetBeans 6.7.1 now and cannot be happier.Huh, I just took a look, and NetBeans looks just like Homesite. I'm going to have to give that a serious look. Thanks for the tip!