This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

My 1st tab opens in Unicode but the 2nd tab opens in Western - WHY? Need both in Unicode.

  • 7 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 29 views
  • Last reply by ccfred

more options

My home page consists of two tabs; the 1st is Google.com & the 2nd is webmail.juno.com. When I open in IE8, both tabs have Unicode (UTF-8) encoding. When I open in Firefox, the 1st has Unicode (UTF-8) encoding BUT the 2nd tab ALWAYS has Western encoding WHY? I must always manually go to View/Text Encoding and change it every time. IE8 does this automatically - How can this be fixed in Firefox so both tabs always open in Unicode?

My home page consists of two tabs; the 1st is Google.com & the 2nd is webmail.juno.com. When I open in IE8, both tabs have Unicode (UTF-8) encoding. When I open in Firefox, the 1st has Unicode (UTF-8) encoding BUT the 2nd tab ALWAYS has Western encoding WHY? I must always manually go to View/Text Encoding and change it every time. IE8 does this automatically - How can this be fixed in Firefox so both tabs always open in Unicode?

Chosen solution

The following extension (which I haven't tried because I haven't noticed any need for it) was updated more recently, so it might be more compatible with changes in Firefox 40-41 regarding extension features:

Charset Switcher https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/charset-switcher/

Support thread: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=797805

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (7)

more options

That is because the server sends this content type in the HTTP response headers: "text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" See "Tools > Page Info > General" You can verify that in the Network Monitor (look for http://my.juno.com).

The page source shows a meta tag for Unicode, but Firefox only use the meta tag if the server doesn't send a content-type and ignores the meta tag otherwise

<meta charset="utf-8" />
more options

Thanks for your reply - I think you are telling me that even though IE-8 takes that same server data but somehow manages to display with Unicode coding, Firefox is not able to do the same.

I still find it hard to believe that Firefox is not advanced enough to allow the user to specify a specific text coding and always use it! IE-8 knows how but Firefox does not .

more options

As I wrote above: The server sends the Unicode (utf-8) content type via a meta tag in the main HTML file, but Firefox always ignores the content type that is send this way if the server is configured to send a (different) content type like in this case. Other browsers may always use the meta tag when present or do some sniffing, but Firefox doesn't do this for security reasons.

See also: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/How_Mozilla_determines_MIME_Types

Modified by cor-el

more options

I understand your explanation, cor-el, that "Firefox always ignores the content type that is send this way" - - THAT IS EXACTLY THE PROBLEM! My issue is that FIREFOX SHOULD NOT ignore the content type - Internet Explorer does not ignore the content type and I submit that Firefox handles it improperly.

Obviously, Firefox does not care about this issue, so until they resolve it, I will continue to change Text Encoding each time I sign on.

more options
more options

Chosen Solution

The following extension (which I haven't tried because I haven't noticed any need for it) was updated more recently, so it might be more compatible with changes in Firefox 40-41 regarding extension features:

Charset Switcher https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/charset-switcher/

Support thread: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=797805

more options

I installed & tried "Content Preferences" - - It did not work.

After that, the most recent post arrived re: "Charset Switcher" I installed it and Hooray! IT WORKS and remembers the character set needed.

Thanks to jscher2000

Modified by ccfred