When I open a file whose character encoding is UTF-8 in Firefox via a file:// URL, it displays all the non-ASCII characters incorrectly. In the View->Chacter Encoding sub-menu, I see the check mark near "Western". When I choose "Unicode" manually from the View->Character Encoding menu, the file displays correctly. But when I then hit <f5> to reload the page, Firefox sets character encoding to "Western" again, the display is garbled again, and to display the file correctly I have to set the right character encoding manually once more. Since I need that functionality frequently, this is a real nuisance which debases the user experience a lot for me. Similar questions have been asked on the Internet, but no one seems to have got a satisfactory answer. Thus, my question is: What should I do to have Firefox display file:// URLs in UTF-8 by default, or at least to have it remember the "Character Encoding" setting over page reloads? As my system is UTF-8 only, I would much prefer the first. (Maintaining separate encodings for different languages instead of using Unicode everywhere should IMO be considered a 20th-century anachronism that certainly has to be supported, probably still for a long time to come, but that should not be forced on users as the default.) Just in case: yes, I know about BOM, but my question is not about changing my files so that Firefox displays them correctly without changing its behavior, but about changing its behavior so that it displays my files correctly without me having to change them. Regards, T.