Configuring Users’ Computers in an International Environment

Recommended Web Browsers for International Use

The Web browser installed on users’ computers can affect how well Microsoft Office 2000 supports switching to different user interface languages. In addition, browsers that support Unicode allow users to create multilingual Web pages.

Supporting multilingual dialog boxes

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 allows Office 2000 applications to display certain dialog boxes in any user interface language that the operating system supports. Dialog boxes such as New and Open from the File menu depend on the code page of the operating system to display text.

A minimum installation of Internet Explorer 5 allows users to switch to different user interface languages regardless of the code page. Without Internet Explorer 5, users might see meaningless characters in dialog boxes after changing user interface languages.

Note   If users are switching between languages that use the same code page — for example, all Western European languages — they don’t need to install Internet Explorer 5 to display all dialog boxes properly.

If you want users to be able to change their user interface language across code pages, but you don’t want a full-featured installation of Internet Explorer 5 on users’ computers, you can customize Office Setup with a minimum installation of Internet Explorer 5.

To customize Office Setup with a minimum installation of Internet Explorer 5

• In the Customize IE5 Installation Options pane of the Office Custom Installation Wizard, select the Upgrade to Internet Explorer 5 option, and in the Internet Explorer 5 upgrade mode box, select Minimum.

Note   After installing Internet Explorer 5, users must turn Microsoft Active Desktop™ off before they can change their user interface language.

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Using Unicode in multilingual Web pages

Unicode allows users to create multilingual Web pages that not only use multiple scripts but also produce smaller files that are easy to parse on your intranet. You need Internet Explorer version 4.01 or later, or Navigator 4.03 or later for your browser to interpret Unicode Web pages. If you want to maintain compatibility with earlier browsers, avoid using Unicode.

Note   The Unicode format commonly used on the Internet is called Universal Character Set Transformation Format 8-bit (UTF-8). UTF-8 is the only Unicode format that is commonly supported by Web browsers and by FrontPage Server Extensions.

You can set Office 2000 applications to save the current HTML document in Unicode. Click Options (Tools menu), and then click Web Options on the General tab. On the Encoding tab, select Unicode (UTF-8) in the Save this document as list.

Note   To save HTML documents in the Unicode format by default, select the Always save Web pages in the default encoding check box in the Web Options dialog box.

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Using Unicode in multilingual URLs

In addition to allowing users to create HTML documents in UTF-8 encoding, Office 2000 and Internet Explorer 5 can send UTF-8 encoded URLs to Web servers.

UTF-8 encoding allows users to use URLs that include non-ASCII characters, regardless of the language of the user’s operating system and browser, or the language version of Office. Without UTF-8 encoding, a user’s Web server must be based on the same code page as that of the user’s operating system in order for the Web server to interpret non-ASCII URLs. However, for a Web server to interpret UTF-8 encoded URLs, the Web server must have UTF-8 support.

Note   To use UTF-8 encoded URLs, you must have Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) version 4.0 or later or another Web server that supports UTF-8.

If your organization has code page – based Web servers that do not support UTF-8 and you have non-ASCII URLs, you should turn off UTF-8 URL encoding in Internet Explorer 5. Otherwise, when users try to use a UTF-8 encoded URL that includes non-ASCII characters, the code page – based Web server that doesn’t support UTF-8 cannot interpret the URL.

To prevent sending URLs in UTF-8 encoding

1. In Internet Explorer 5, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
2. In the Internet Options dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
3. In the Settings box under Browsing, clear the Always send URLs as UTF-8 check box.

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See also

In addition to optimizing international capabilities on the client side, you can also add multilingual support on your international Web servers. For information about international server requirements, such as multilingual URLs, see Installing Office Web Features for International Users.

Documents that use Unicode are easier for users who work in different languages to share. For more information about Unicode, see Sharing Multilingual Documents.

To display localized server messages, you must install a localized version of Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions. For information about the latest release of FrontPage Server Extensions in a particular language, see the Microsoft Front Page Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/.