Asian character sets

html entites vs. actual characters

[jcmoon]

Until now, our current editing tools only allow Latin characters, even when saved in UTF-8 or Unicode. In the past, we've done Japanese by using HTML character entities, like

<b>&#26085;&#26412;</b>

We're working on a Japanese website, and want it to rank highly in the search-engines. Should we get a new text editor that lets us use Japanese characters in the code? Does it make a difference? We want this site to appear as much authentic Japanese as we can.

When I view-source on popular Japanese sites, I see Japanese characters in the code, but wonder if that's just my browser ...

[bill]

HTML character entities sound like a difficult editing environment. Why not use a text editor that can properly generate UTF-8?

Remember that simply saving your source as UTF-8 won't automatically convert the Japanese to UTF-8. You'd have to enter UTF-8 Japanese into the source or get it converted.