IE and Office

Microsoft has released a beta (test) version of its next update to its browser, Internet Explorer, in conjunction with the upcoming release of Vista, the next Windows version. The current version of IE is 6; the beta is IE 7 and is now in its third release. Although it is better at displaying Unicode than version 6, it still cannot correctly display all the blog entries in Living Languages in June 2006. (Click here to download.)

I have submitted an error report, so hopefully Microsoft will add complete Unicode compatibility.

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Special Characters in Word

There are a variety of ways to enter special characters not on your keyboard in Microsoft Word. One way is Insert -> Symbol. The shortcut for that is Alt + I, S. Try to select a character from the default font if possible to preserve the look of your document. If you’re looking for a character with a diacritical mark like á or ñ, you’ll find them after the English characters (ASCII “ask ee”). If you don’t find your character, keep searching, because they aren’t arranged alphabetically.

Sometimes the pull-down list in the upper right corner of the Symbol dialog window will help you locate the character you’re looking for more quickly.

If you can’t find the character you’re looking for, try Lucinda Sans Unicode or Arial Unicode MS (see also Unicode-Enabled Fonts on this blog).