Character Encoding is changing random
Hello,
For a short while I'm having the next problem: When I am using FireFox, after a while characters on pages are showed as 'boxes'. With setting backView -> Character Encoding to ISO-8859-1 the characters are shown correctly again.
I do not understand why the character encoding is changing random to UTF-8, while I have selected the ISO-8859-1 and set automatically recognize to false.
In the options menu I have also set default 'ISO-8859-1' as default character encoding.
Hoping someone can tell me why it random changes and why the same page can be show correctly for 10 times, but the 11th time the character set has changed? And of course how can I solve this problem.
All Replies (4)
It is the server that determines the encoding that web pages used by sending a HTTP response header. Firefox only uses the default if the server doesn't send a header with an encoding and there is also no meta tag to specify an encoding (Tools > Page Info > General).
I do know a website can determine the character encoding, but the strange part of the problem I occur is that the same page can be shown 10 times correctly, but an 11th time the characters like é and ë, are shown as 'blocks'/'questionmarks'.
Is there an explanation for that behaviour?
Modified by blub
That shouldn't happen randomly. A possible cause can be security software that has modified some HTTP response headers. Firefox extensions are a less likely cause.
If security software should cause this behaviour, it is not logical the same page is correct for 10 times and another time not.
Could it be a bug in FireFox, or could a reinstall of FireFox work? Maybe some other settings in Windows have infulence on this?
Modified by blub