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Firefox 3.6.3 Character Encoding

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bibblebub | 18:38 Fri 21st May 2010 | Internet
6 Answers
When I try to display some pages in Firefox e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucharest I get this type of error...

Unicode Character 'Ş' cannot be encoded using standard URL encoding.
(URL encoding only supports 8-bit characters.)
A space (+) will be substituted.

... popping up for as many times as the page needs it. Yet if I display that page in Google Chrome 4.1.249.1064 there are no problems, but both are using Western (150-8859-1) encoding. (IE7 with default settings also has no problem with the page).

So any suggestions for why Firefox has a problem, and what change of setting would be advisable?

Thank in advance.
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Try View/Character Encoding/Autodetect/Universal.
If I view the page using 150-8859-1, I get gibberish for that character.
If I turn on Autodetect/Universal, it displays fine.
It also displays ok if autodetect is turned off but UTF8 is selected as the default encoding.
19:20 Fri 21st May 2010
Question Author
^^^ of course that should be Western (ISO-8859-1)
enter about:config into the address bar of firefox, click ok to get past the warning and then look for network:enableIDN and set it to true.

However, doing so is a massive security risk! do so at your own peril.
hmmm, looking again, that URL in your example does not include any unicode characters, be very very careful as you may be infected with a browser redirector. might be a good time to run a full malware scan on your computer.
Try View/Character Encoding/Autodetect/Universal.
If I view the page using 150-8859-1, I get gibberish for that character.
If I turn on Autodetect/Universal, it displays fine.
It also displays ok if autodetect is turned off but UTF8 is selected as the default encoding.
Question Author
Unfortunately enableIDN is already set to true, and a quick test shows that that setting being either true or false makes no difference.

I did a Malwarebytes' full scan just a couple of days ago (it found nothing) however this is not a new problem, it's been appearing for months at least. But it only occurs with a few pages of Wikipedia and I think that it's only ever happened with a handful of other sites. So it's only a minor irritation that I just thought I'd ask about now.

Thanks for replying, Chuck.
Question Author
rojash - I've tried those combinations of settings and it worked with one of them but I'm not sure which so I'm going to wait till I come across a page that has just a couple of encoding problems before I play around with those settings. That page I gave requires 17 clicks to display, and it has become rapidly annoying having to do that every time I try a new setting.

So thanks for your answer.

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