My understanding of "charset" -- whichever one is used -- is that it determines how many characters get shown with the least potential for errors. I brought up changing the charset because the 12__ number is old and, as the Internet has progressed, the older charsets can introduce more errors in how browsers read and render characters. This page explains it better than I can: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/charset.html#spec-char-encoding The charset isn't specifc to RW but is needed for all sites. My old frontpage stuck in the older (oldest??) charset--- I had no idea what it was so I left it until I read on the list that it was old and should be something else. As a side note, I dislike "having" to make a change, especially if I don't understand "Why?" I look at webmaking 3 ways, depending on a number of factors. The 3 ways are: 1. Some of webmaking is like doing taxes... I may not understand why it is important (and think it's nuts sometimes), but it's the way experts say to do it and without a good argument against doing it, I just do it. These decisions usually result in no bad effect, so I do them. Often, it results in a better outcome than I had ! 2. Some things are just beyond me and I decide NOT to use the code because I have no idea what effect it will have. This includes things like CSS which I'm just learning CSS in baby steps. 3. And lastly, there are things someone says I "should do" and I research it. And after reading, I grasp the reasons and make the change. Usually, I find the other people were right all along. For charset, I used reasoning #1... I did it cos it's like taxes and experts said I "should". Then, i started reading about it (#2) and given what i could understand, I agreed it was a good change. Given that I use those 3 criteria, I'm the last person who'd ever insist someone change their pages just based on what I say. LOL Do what you think is good for your pages. And if you read something that changes your mind, that's fine, too. I hope the page I found helps. Judy On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Charles Barnum <jcnreno@charter.net> wrote: > Hello Tina, > Here are a few points to consider. > 1--Where in the instructions for EW does it say to set the page or site > to us/western iso, charset=iso-1 ? If the 1252 is "old fashioned" why > does EW use it? > 2--I did not set the charset to anything because I do not even know > where that is. > 3--I do not use RW Free Pages for that web site. Where the banner goes > and what it does is up to RW. > 4--As far as validating, it validates fine using the code checker in > EW. If some other validator does not validate it, I do not care. > 5--I did NOT follow the instructions for the Rootsweb banner because I > have never read them and never been told by RW to read them, and I do > not know where they are. I upload my pages, and RW is free to place > banners on them as they feel necessary. > 6--The web site you refer to as the authority is another one of Pat > Geary's sites. ( http://www.genealogy-computer-tips.com/xhtml-doctype/ > ) Could you provide a MS page in the future instead of her sites? > > Charles