Configuring Internet Explorer for Mac (Deprecated)

Upgrade Recommendation: Although Internet Explorer 5 can process some scripts such as Chinese, Japananese, Korean and Russian, it lacks utilities for many other scripts. For these additional scripts Mozilla, Safari or Opera are recommended.

Set Default Fonts

1. Under the Edit menu (Explorer menu on OS X ), select Preferences.
2. You should see a window with a list of options on the left. Under the Web Browser options, choose Languages/Fonts.
3. See if your script is available in the drop-down menu.
   If your script is not listed, switch to Mozilla, Firefox, Safari or Opera .
   Otherwise, determine which encoding and fonts are needed for your script from the individual By Language pages.
   
   
   MAC I.E. PREFERENCES
   
4. From the Default Character Set dropdown list, change Western (Latin 1) to the appropriate script (e.g. Chinese Traditional). Note: Not all scripts may be available; Netscape/ Mozilla or Safari has more options.
5. Select an appropriate font as the Proportional font and one for the Monospace font from the dropdown lists. A monospaced font is one in which all the characters take up the same amount of space and is associated with older computer terminals.

   This is monospace type.

6. Select a default font for the other options of Cursive, Serif Sans-serif and Fantasy. An example of a serif font in English is Times New Roman; an example of a sans-serif font in English is Arial or Helvetica. For some scripts, you may use the same font for all options.
   
   Example serif text.
   Example sans-serif text.
   
   
7. Change the Default Character Set back to Western and click OK to close the window.

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Troubleshooting Web Sites

If you go to a site written in a non-English script, but see a series of English nonsense letters and punctuation, or a set of question marks, try these steps.

Manually Switch Encoding

For some Web sites, such as www.csssm.org (Chinese Simplified), you will need to manually switch from Western encoding view to the appropriate script encoding.

CHANGE ENCODING

1. Under the View menu, select Character Set.
2. If necessary switch from Western to an appropriate encoding (e.g. Chinese Simplified).
3. If there is more than one option per script, select one until the page displays properly.
4. AFTER you leave the site, you will have to switch your browser back to Western.

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Override Font

Some Web sites, such as directory.google.com/Top/World/Chinese_Simplified/, specify a font which may not be available on your machine. This problem is prevalent on the Macintosh.

To view the Web site, you need to override the font of the Web page in order for the page to be properly displayed. Click on the link below for detailed instructions.

Override Font Instructions for Internet Explorer (Macintosh)

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This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).

Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.

Last Modified: Thursday, 26-Apr-2007 10:30:54 EDT