Complex Scripts in Internet Explorer 5.0

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Complex Scripts in Internet Explorer 5.0

• and Multilingual text

F. Avery Bishop Senior Program Manager Microsoft
Corporation
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Agenda Using Complex Scripts such as Arabic in
Web pages

• Single Binary Internet Explorer 5.0
• UTF-8 Recommended encoding for multilingual HTML
  design
• Font embedding for universal display of Arabic
  pages
• Displaying Arabic pages with dynamic HTML
• Accessing Unicode data from web page with SQL
  Server 7.0

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Internet Explorer 5.0 on Win32 Platforms

• Displays complex scripts (e.g., Arabic) on all
  language platforms
• Supports complex scripts in Document Object Model

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Encodings for Multi-lingual Text in Web Pages

• Raw Unicode
• OK for intranet on Windows NT networks
• Not good for internet pages
• Number entities, e.g., 2325
• OK for occasional use, e.g., inserting characters
  not in the main script of page
• Not good for large documents
• UTF-8 Recommended encoding
• Works just about everywhere
• Supported by IE 4.0, Netscape 4.0

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Creating UTF-8 Webpages

• Use charsetUTF-8 in META tag
• Save HTML page as UTF-8 using notepad, Word, etc.
• Saving as UTF-8 in Word
• Select File/Save As WebPage/Tools
• Select Web Options/Encoding
• Change charset designation to UTF-8

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Embedded Fonts in Web Pages

• Downloadable fonts used only in web pages
• Deleted when page is closed
• WEFT tool
• Creates embedded font from TTF file
• Saves download time/space by using only those
  glyphs required for the page
• On Microsoft website, see workshop/author/fontemb
  ed/font_embed.asp

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Introduction to DHTML

• Based on Document Object Model
• Objects in HTML document
• Text in objects including titles, headers, etc
• Attributes such as font, color, etc
• Are accessible via scripts, e.g., JScript or
  VBScript
• Supported in IE 4.0
• See various documents under www.microsoft.com/work
  shop/author for overview

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Examples of DHTML

• onmouseover makeitalic()
• onmouseout makenormal()
• Sample Dynamic HTML
• function makeItalic()
• Head1.style.fontstyle Italic
• function makeNormal()
• Head1.style.fontstyle Normal

Heading tag
Jscript functions that change style of heading
text
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Using BiDi Text (e.g., Arabic and Hebrew) in DHTML

• Use same design rules as static HTML
• Mark encoding with charset value
• Encode in UTF-8 or an Arabic or Hebrew charset
• Use embedded fonts if needed
• Use DIR attribute inside tags
• HTML
• DHTML object document.dir "RTL"

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Unicode Support in SQL Server 7.0

• Unicode datatypes in SQL Server 7.0
• NCHAR
• NVARCHAR
• NTEXT
• Indicate Unicode text by Ntext, in SQL queries
• create table myTable (col1 CHAR(8), col2
  NCHAR(8))
• insert into myTable (col1,col2) (Japan, N??')
• Utilities for entering/retrieving Unicode data
• Query Analyzer
• Data Transformation Services
• Client application using ODBC

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Accessing SQL Server 7.0 Unicode Data through ASP
Webpages

• Use standard encodings
• UTF-8 in web pages
• Unicode in SQL Server 7.0
• Access data through Jscript/ODBC
• Jscript automatically translates Unicode to
  current codepage in web page
• Defaults to system codepage
• Specify UTF-8 codepage using
• // Scopesession
• // Scopepage

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Demo!
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Questions?