utf-8 is a variable length character set, i.e. some special characters take more than one byte. If you are doing database driven web pages this can cause string processing problems for languages like PHP and Perl. UTF-8 shouldn't be a problem for static web pages but for now I'm sticking with iso-8859-1 until utf-8 gains maturity and more universal support. For much the same maturity reason, I'm avoiding XHTML 1.0. HTML 4.01 strict works well, displays equivalently in IE and Firefox and should convert to XHTML 2+ fairly easily. Jim Rickenbacker ----- Original Message ----- From: "George Waller" <George@waller.org> To: <rootsweb-help@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 10:59 AM Subject: [ROOTSWEB-HELP] utf-8 >I too use utf-8 based on reading that it was an > international standard. Does anyone else have > observations on its use? > George > > On 4 Jan 2010 at 23:24, Tina Clarke wrote: > >> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

> For much the same maturity reason, I'm avoiding XHTML 1.0. HTML 4.01 strict > works well, displays equivalently in IE and Firefox and should convert to > XHTML 2+ fairly easily. Or to put it another way, if you are validating your pages to a strict doctype, whether it's HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 is a matter of taste. Either one will help you a lot in future conversions. Validating to HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 Transitional is better than no validation, but it still passes a lot of crud which is better off removed or updated. -- Bob Sullivan Schenectady Digital History Archive <http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/> Schenectady County (NY) Public Library