Weird Character Issues II
Eddie Kasper
but I wanted to share this new information with you.
Subsequent to our introducing the UTF-8 tag in the header.asp file, I am
informed that while the "A" characters are gone, now these little boxes
appear on pages throughout www.euphoriababy.com.
Worse, I cannot seem them, but the client proves their presence by showing
me screen captures. So other than having her confirm their presence or
not, trying to fix this is going to be tough since I won't know if we have
reached success without her interaction.
Here's the screen capture: http://euphoriababy.com/images/Capture-A1.jpg
The live page:
http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Bottles-c5.htm
Additional pages that has the same problem:
http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Weego-Glass-Baby-Bottles-5p136.htm
http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Miracle-Blanket-in-Pink-159p2304.htm
Birk Binnard
squares. I checked other pages too...A-OK across the board. Same results
when I switched to using the IE8 engine - no problems.
Maybe your client is using a strange browser?
--
Birk Binnard
http://www.birkbinnard.com
Eddie Kasper
in IE regardless which version I use:
http://systemthree-com.ds5053.greybeardhosting.com/store/pc/MSDS-d4.htm
I have the UTF-8 character encoding just inside the opening of the <head>
tag.
What seems to be causing the little squares are:
1. div, span, td or most tags that have a space or &nsbs; in them
2. ASCII Character Codes such as ® or © etc.
This only occurs via Product Cart (asp software). Product cart has a CMS
where clients can add their own content. When I enter any of the above for
the first time, it doesn't give me the weird square character. However, if I
go back and edit the page via cms and then save it, those little squares
reappears.
So I went back to the page via cms and noticed that what I entered is no
longer there or is the same. For instance, if I enter ® and save it, it
will display the symbol as � on the live page. But when I go back to edit
the page, I notice that the ® is no longer there but instead the �
symbol is there. If I save it, then the squares shows up on the live page.
This is very frustrating and time consumer. We have over 100 sites hosted on
the same servers using Windows server (2005 I think) and the problem seems
to occur at random for certain sites.
If I do this via html only (no database) I never get this problem.
I'd appreciate if I can find a concrete, detailed solution to this problem.
Thanks.
Eddie
"Birk Binnard" <bi...@birkbinnard.com> wrote in message
news:ulJZ2oVb...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
Birk Binnard
> This is not isolated. I found this one too and it works in Firefox but not
> in IE regardless which version I use:
I loaded that site into my Firefox and IE itself and saw no problems. My
system is Vista-64, though this should not matter. Someone who knows
more about this will have to come up some ideas; I'm stumped.
Ronx
to the database as something other than UTF-8, and your pages are presenting
it in pages with the UTF-8 meta header.
This effect is demonstrated at
http://www.rxs-enterprises.co.uk/tests/symbols/
though this page talks about HTTP headers, rather than mismatched database
data and page meta tags (your server does not provide a charset HTTP header,
so that is not to blame.)
--
Ron Symonds
Microsoft MVP (Expression Web)
http://www.rxs-enterprises.org/fp
Reply only to group - emails will be deleted unread.
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:O8PFf6Vb...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
Eddie Kasper
database to blame because the cms is showing the symbol instead of the
character code when I edit it a second time?
There has to be solution. The Product Cart software out of the box does not
present this problem.
"Ronx" <ron...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:enfOJPab...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> it will display the symbol as ? on the live page. But when I go back to
>> edit the page, I notice that the ® is no longer there but instead the
>> ? symbol is there. If I save it, then the squares shows up on the live
Christoph Schneegans
> The Product Cart software out of the box does not present this
> problem.
If this is a classic ASP application (rather than ASP.NET), chances
are that it defaults to ANSI encoding. xWeb supports both ANSI and
UTF-8 encodings (and several more), so you can try to change
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
to
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Windows-1252" />.
--
<http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
Eddie Kasper
Could there be anything on the user's end that would cause it to display
those unwanted characters?
"Christoph Schneegans" <Chri...@Schneegans.de> wrote in message
news:7n5b9cF...@mid.individual.net...
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
>
Christoph Schneegans
>> If this is a classic ASP application (rather than ASP.NET), chances
>> are that it defaults to ANSI encoding. xWeb supports both ANSI and
>> UTF-8 encodings (and several more), so you can try to change
>>
>> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
>>
>> to
>>
>> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Windows-1252"
>> />.
>
> That didn't work either.
While <http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Bottles-c5.htm> now contains a
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Windows-1252">
encoding declarations, the page itself is still UTF-8 encoded. This
should not have happened if you changed the encoding declaration in
xWeb, since xWeb automatically recodes a file according to the
encoding declaration. To fix the problem in xWeb now, perform these
steps:
1. Open the page, go to "File > Properties... > Language" and select
"Unicode (UTF-8)" from the "Reload the current document as"
combobox.
2. Open that dialog again and choose "US/Western European (Windows)"
from the "Save the document as" combobox and click OK.
This will recode the file from UTF-8 to ANSI. By the way, you
should avoid to use comments such as
<!--<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">-->
<!--<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">-->
as this could confuse both xWeb and browsers. Remove these comments.
Eddie Kasper
characters. This is very frustrating.
In regards to your suggestions, I assume that the only files that needs to
be resaved are the ones that has <head> tags such as header.asp because the
store only uses one header.asp file.
Eddie
"Christoph Schneegans" <Chri...@Schneegans.de> wrote in message
news:7n5v6aF...@mid.individual.net...
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
>
Christoph Schneegans
> I appreciate your time on this but unfortunately I still get the
> weird characters. This is very frustrating.
>
> In regards to your suggestions, I assume that the only files that
> needs to be resaved are the ones that has <head> tags such as
> header.asp because the store only uses one header.asp file.
This is a probably a misapprehension, and might be the very cause of
all the problems. *Every* HTML-like file that you edit in xWeb
should contain a <meta> encoding declaration. This also applies to
include files, which typically do not contain a complete, valid HTML
document. Inserting a <meta> element in include files would result
in an invalid document. Therefore, hide the encoding declaration in
a comment:
<!-->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<!-->
Browsers (and validators) ignore this comment, but xWeb does not.
Place this comment at the very start of every document that does not
contain a <head> element. In pages that contain a <head> element,
write
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
...
</head>
as usual.
Eddie Kasper
fonts bigger and out of place).
This is blowing me away. How come this doesn't happen with other editors? I
mean, if I use Dreamweaver on the site and edit it for the first time, it
never creates those weird characters. Once I use xWeb and save any files, it
show those characters and I can't get it to revert back even when I used
Dreamweaver to open and save it again in hopes it would go away.
"Christoph Schneegans" <Chri...@Schneegans.de> wrote in message
news:7nb4crF...@mid.individual.net...
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
>
Eddie Kasper
now I get these characters issues that wasn't there before.
I tried all 3 character encoding and the issue persist.
"Christoph Schneegans" <Chri...@Schneegans.de> wrote in message
news:7nb4crF...@mid.individual.net...
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
>
Eddie Kasper
<h3>Mirror Coat<span class="regcopy">®</span>
Without closing the CMS editor of that page that I added the above code, I
hit 'Modify' (which saves it) and it transform ® to the symbol.
Then I go to the live page, refresh and it displays correctly.
Now if I go back to that CMS page and just simply hit 'Modify' again, the
weird character shows up.
The only way to get it to work again is to copy and paste the above code
again into the CMS and then save it.
The clients that complain about this are those that have edited the page
after the initial first time entry. In other words, the problem occurs once
it's been saved a second time.
So can it be server or database issue and if so, how do I check to see what
the server lacks or what the incorrect settings may be?
I really don't have much hair left. *sigh*
Thanks.
"Christoph Schneegans" <Chri...@Schneegans.de> wrote in message
news:7nb4crF...@mid.individual.net...
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
>
Cowtoon
When I checked your site ... and those weird characters "do" show up. I'm
running IE8 on Windows 7 (home - retail). I had the same problem with EW3
and it's been frustrating. I was hoping to see a better solution here. I
tried the character map and tested a few of the fonts. I can't remember
which font I used to fix the problem, but it did fix this audity, but I'm
not happy with that solution (it's not help if I don't remember which font
to select the character from). I had the problem with apostrophe's and
bullets. It would always give me a ? instead.
Good luck.
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:OXwOCdGc...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
Cheryl D Wise
but optional). You can choose not to add the BOM in v2 & later but not all
file extensions offer that option. (PHP is one that does.)
--
Cheryl D Wise
http://by-expression.com
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:eqYe#8FcKH...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
Cheryl D Wise
to use the BOM on Classic ASP pages (.asp) is in v3 but not in earlier
versions.
--
Cheryl D Wise
http://by-expression.com
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:eqYe#8FcKH...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
Eddie Kasper
I have v3 now and I cannot find where I can disable the BOM for asp.
Also, is there a way to import all the saved ftp logins I have in v2?
Finally, is there a way to change the skin for v3 to revert it back to
classic style (visually looks the same as v2)?
"Cheryl D Wise" <wise...@newsgroup.nospam> wrote in message
news:%23yrrLCS...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
Cheryl D Wise
Just looked under Tools.> Page Editor Options > Authoring tab but I don't
see ASP in EW3 SP1 though I was Sure it was there before I installed SP 1
which allows you to use your system c'mon instead of black.
EW3 uses a WPF interface so it will never look like V2.
--
Cheryl D Wise
http://by-expression.com
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:e2DBwoc...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
Eddie Kasper
I haven't found that post by him. Can you provide a url?
> Just looked under Tools.> Page Editor Options > Authoring tab but I don't
> see ASP in EW3 SP1 though I was Sure it was there before I installed SP 1
> which allows you to use your system c'mon instead of black.
Well this doesn't help me. Being visually impaired, taking away my
preferred interface colors is causing problems for me. So I am stuck between
a rock and a hard place. I can't disable the BOM for asp in EW2. Even if I
am able to turn it of in EW3, I can't change the interface colors so that I
can use it exclusively.
I remember when XP came out. You had the option to use the classic them
(Win98) if you wanted to. This concept should be used for ALL product
updates or upgrades or new versions. I understand that not everyone will be
happy with every changes but by allowing this kind of feature as option for
those that depends on it would greatly increase their willingnewss to
upgrade.
Now back to my problem which seems to be unsolvable unless I go back to
Dreamweaver.
Why does MS have to be problematic of this sort on sites that is
specifically using classic .asp and is on windows servers? I don't see
dreamweaver or any other editor using BOM or cause it to have weird
characters. I think whatever MS is trying to do it should be made to where
this kind of stuff should be turned off by default and allow the users to
turn on the BOM if so desire.
I have been a avid FrontPage and EW user since 1996 and have fully supported
MS and their products but right now I am at a lost and I don't know what
else to do to resolve this problem which may cause me to lose multiple
ecommerce contract jobs because I can't get rid of the weird characters. I
rather switch to dreamweaver before I do.
HELP...I am begging for a complete solution. I'd be willing to tinker with
EW2 or 3 core files to rid of the BOM issue so that it's never used. I'd be
open for someone to ftp into a site with this problem and see if they can
get rid of it for both IE and Firefox.
Cheryl D Wise
--
Cheryl D Wise
http://by-expression.com
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
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Eddie Kasper
"Cheryl D Wise" <wise...@newsgroup.nospam> wrote in message
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Eddie Kasper
Application Options /
Now to fix those pesky weird character issues.
Here's the link I have been troubleshooting
http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Bottles-c5.htm
You can looks in the yellow text box. There were a couple of them with the
weird charact (some kind of capital A). Once I applied the suggested fix, I
no longer see them but the client said that she now get's the little square
boxes.
She is up to date with IE8 and XP.
I need to know how many of you here can see the little square boxes within
that yellow text box of that url and how many that do not see it.
I am trying to determine what the percentage is that sees it.
Ugh! I am now bald!!!
"Cheryl D Wise" <wise...@newsgroup.nospam> wrote in message
news:eojoMDec...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
senn
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> skrev i meddelelsen
news:%232yVMje...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Disregard my last post. I found the color scheme option under Tools /
> Application Options /
>
> Now to fix those pesky weird character issues.
>
> Here's the link I have been troubleshooting
>
> http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Bottles-c5.htm
>
> You can looks in the yellow text box. There were a couple of them with the
> weird charact (some kind of capital A). Once I applied the suggested fix,
> I no longer see them but the client said that she now get's the little
> square boxes.
>
> She is up to date with IE8 and XP.
>
> I need to know how many of you here can see the little square boxes within
> that yellow text box of that url and how many that do not see it.
>
> I am trying to determine what the percentage is that sees it.
>
> Ugh! I am now bald!!!
This depends on visitors browser character code settings.
My browser is set to Unicode. I see no pesky weird character issues.
But I do, when changing browser code setting to Western European.
( browsers is EI7 and Firefox). Probably same on all the others.
These browsers default setting is Unicode. Anyway, I never altered it.
/senn
Ronx
IE8.
Reply only to group - emails will be deleted unread.
"Eddie Kasper" <ed...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:#2yVMjec...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
Christoph Schneegans
> This depends on visitors browser character code settings.
No. Browsers use the encoding declared by the page.
> My browser is set to Unicode.
Browsers cannot be "set to Unicode" because Unicode is not an
character encoding. UTF-8, for example, is.
Christoph Schneegans
> Going back over the thread I see you are using classic asp. The
> option not to use the BOM on Classic ASP pages (.asp) is in v3 but
> not in earlier versions.
A BOM is certainly not the cause of this problem, and furthermore,
there is absolutely no need to remove the BOM from .asp pages at all!
The BOM is "consumed" by IIS and never even reaches the browser. You
can easily check that <http://schneegans.de/temp/xweb3/bom.asp>
contains no BOM after processing by IIS, while the corresponding source
file <http://schneegans.de/temp/xweb3/bom.asp.txt> does contain a BOM.
The _only_ situation when a BOM causes problems is in .php files and
SSI includes.
Christoph Schneegans
> Here's the link I have been troubleshooting
>
> http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Bottles-c5.htm
This page is UTF-8 encoded and accordingly declares UTF-8 encoding.
Thus, a browser should properly display this page, unless the
browser is configured to ignore the encoding provided by your page.
In IE, this might happen when a user thoughtlessly disables the
"Auto-Select" option in the "Encoding" menu.
Note that a BOM would prevent IE users from manually selecting another
encoding, i.e. a BOM is the only way to make absolutely sure that
UTF-8 encoded pages are displayed correctly in IE. For example, open
<http://schneegans.de/> and try to change the encoding in IE. You will
find that IE always sticks to UTF-8. This is because of the BOM.
<http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Bottles-c5.htm> does not contain
a BOM at the moment.
Christoph Schneegans
> The clients that complain about this are those that have edited the
> page after the initial first time entry. In other words, the problem
> occurs once it's been saved a second time.
I think I lost track. In fact, is Expression Web involved at all?
What's the name of the CMS? I assume it is browser-based, so you should
try to use another browser to add or edit pages in order to check if
the problem always occurs. In IE, make sure that the "Auto-Select"
option in the "Encoding" menu is enabled.
What is your database? Can you access it directly, e.g. using
Management Studio in case of a Microsoft SQL Server database?
Could you please post the URL in question a second time? If this page
is contains include pages, post the direct URL of any of these, too.
KathyW
You can set browsers to use different encoding. E.g.: My IE8 determines
from the page served up that the OP's page is UTF-8 and displays it properly.
But if I go to View -> Encoding and check, say "Windows European", it
reloads the page using that encoding and, voila, A's with carots appear. Or
if I use Simplified Chinese, they are Chinese characters.
I don't know what options other browser have - I haven't looked.
"Christoph Schneegans" wrote:
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> · XML Schema Validator
>
> .
>
Christoph Schneegans
> My IE8 determines from the page served up that the OP's page is UTF-8
> and displays it properly.
Yeah, by default, browsers use the encoding declared by the page rather
than some "character code settings", as senn implied.
> But if I go to View -> Encoding and check, say "Windows European",
> it reloads the page using that encoding and, voila, A's with carots
> appear.
That really doesn't matter here. Why would anybody override the
declared encoding when the characters look correct?
> I don't know what options other browser have - I haven't looked.
Almost all browsers offer such a mechanism. They have to, because there
are just too much broken pages out there.
Eddie Kasper
clicked on File / Properties and the selected UTF-8 when saved and checked
to add the BOM. I refreshed the site and it still shows the little square
boxes. As you stated, I attempted to change the encoding via the browser to
something else in which it did thus it never stayed on the UTF-8 encoding
like you suggested it would if the BOM was included.
So why doesn't it work to keep the browser from changing the encoding
manually?
Also, you mentioned that you don't want to include the BOM to php files and
SSI includes. I understand that about the php but when you say SSI, do you
mean for php only or for any SSI whether it be php or asp?
"Christoph Schneegans" <Chri...@Schneegans.de> wrote in message
news:7nobm4F...@mid.individual.net...
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
>
Eddie Kasper
Can I contact you directly. I think my boss may hiring you to get this thing
resolved because we now have 5-6 sites that is producing the weird
characters.
We are using classic asp, EW2, mySql, windows server and Product Cart
software with it's own built cms.
Thanks.
Eddie
"Christoph Schneegans" <Chri...@Schneegans.de> wrote in message
news:7nodf8F...@mid.individual.net...
> <http://schneegans.de/sv/> � XML Schema Validator
>
Christoph Schneegans
> As you stated, I attempted to change the encoding via the browser to
> something else in which it did thus it never stayed on the UTF-8
> encoding like you suggested it would if the BOM was included.
The answer is simple � there is no BOM in
<http://www.euphoriababy.com/store/pc/Bottles-c5.htm>. A simple way
to check this is <http://web-sniffer.net/>; this tool would print
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 (BOM UTF-8)
or
Content-Type: text/html (BOM UTF-8)
when a BOM is present.
As I stated in another post, the server might "consume" the BOM. For
example, this is the case with ASP. To create a BOM in ASP code, insert
this statement at the very beginning of the .asp file:
<% Response.BinaryWrite ChrB(&HEF) & ChrB(&HBB) & ChrB(&HBF) %>
Christoph Schneegans
> Can I contact you directly.
My e-mail address works as advertised.