The HTML 3 standard suggests that you should be able to use any UNICODE character in a page. (Before the flak begins, yes, this is a loose interpretation.)

There appears to be a way to embed or link a font to display extended characters. In essence, the font could download with the page. This appears to be infrequently done, and is probably not a reasonable thing to expect of most sites.

The page server should send the character codes, leaving it upt to your browser to have the means to render them. It should not "lose" pieces of the code in the process. (And I'll accept rebuttals on this one, too.)

I note that most US users will have US-English "language" as their default setting. You can go to ControlPanel - Add/RemovePrograms and install "International Languages" if you have your install CD still handy. (Note that the "International" sets are still all western european.)

Once you have installed the additional fonts that go with the "International Set," IE lets you select multiple languages, and rearrange the choices in order of preference.

Setting up like this might facilitate display of other characters - but when you post, you must remember that posting the most brilliant contribution does absolutely no good if nobody can read it. If you find a better setup, you'll need to tell us so we can all agree to use it.

As an incidental note: I've run the full set of UNICODE values, and examined them as html. The posting I linked is limited to those that might be considered "reasonably useful." There are a few "cute" things at higher values, but the density of useful characters (with the fonts I had loaded that day) gets very low above those shown.

John