HTML Symbols

♥

[Notionz]

I use HTML symbols between my links (♥). I did a system recovery, upgraded to IE6 and now my heart symbols are just little boxes. As far as I can tell, all the symbols work except the card suits (hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs). Are these symbols not user-friendly? or is my computer just messed up?

[Notionz]

that smileys doesnt belong there lol this is the code for the symbol

♥

[Notionz]

the arrows dont work either

[tomda]

Then use webdings/winddings font (there are plenty of arrows, signs and I am sure there is an heart).

Tommy

[dcrombie]

It sounds like a system resource problem on your computer. I wasn't familiar with that code so I did a search and found this demo [brainjar.com] which I think's pretty awesome!

;)

[photon]

The demo doesn't seem to work in Opera 7.23.

[dcrombie]

That seems to be the same problem the original poster is having:

Safari : near perfect
IE (Mac) : symbols display but bunched and overlapping
Netscape (Mac) : symbols display as boxes
Opera (Mac) : symbols display properly but 'cards' and numbers are wrong and JS broken

[choster]

You may need to restore any newer fonts that you installed with new applications or Windows updates. Depending on the age of your system, the installed fonts may not have all the characters that modern fonts do (due to the invention of the euro and the advent of Unicode). The Brainjar demo renders correctly for me in IE6 and Firefox 0.8 on Win2K.

[Notionz]

Thanks for all the tips! The demo didnt work on my system either. I did lose a lot of my fonts with the system recovery, so that may be the problem. If that is it, though, then many of my visitors probably see boxes instead of hearts. Using Wingdings is a good idea, since everyone has that font. I cant find a heart in Wingdings, but there are so many more possiblities, including a much better arrow! The font "Symbol" has the card suits. Is "Symbol" a standard font found on most systems?
Thanks again everyone!
Leslie

[Purple Martin]

No, not everyone has Wingdings! Here is an extract from a relevant article:

However, using Wingdings characters in Web pages is a bad idea, because the font does not use Unicode encoding and is not available on all computers. The intended Wingdings characters may not appear on computers running non-Microsoft operating systems such as Mac OS 9, Mac OS X 10 or Linux. The intended characters are also unlikely to appear on computers that are running Windows when using a standards-compliant browser such as Mozilla, Netscape 7 or Opera 6 or 7. The same problems are found with the Webdings, Wingdings 2 and Wingdings 3 fonts – they should not be used in Web pages.

[alanwood.net...]

[BjarneDM]

Mozilla has a bug regarding draving the suit symbols since 1.4rc2 - [bugzilla.mozilla.org...]

the work-around in mozilla is to enclose the symbols in <tt>&hearts;</tt>

putting <tt></tt> around the suit symbols in the brainjar example fixes the page in Mozilla 1.6

[Notionz]

Wow, I really thought Wingdings was 1 of the more common fonts. The links posted are helpful, thanks! Im not having a lot of luck so far (sleep deprived!), but these card suits works on mine. Would this work for most visitors?

<font face="Symbol">&#167;</font>
<font face="Symbol">&#168;</font>
<font face="Symbol">&#169;</font>
<font face="Symbol">&#170;</font>

[BjarneDM]

the suite symbols are defined in the standards. all browsers ought to support them. there's no need to specify any font.

[Notionz]

could you give me an example of the standard code for the suit symbols?

[choster]

Named entity = Unicode entity = numerical entity

&spades; = &#x2660; = &#9824;
&clubs; = &#x2663; = &#9827;
&hearts; = &#x2665; = &#9829;
&diams; = &#x2666; = &#9830;

But again, unless you have a font installed on your system that includes those symbols, and unless your browser knows how to translate the entities into those symbols, you won't see them. The world of what browsers ought and what browsers do, of course, is our whole profession.

[Notionz]

thanks, but none of those codes work on mine

[Notionz]

I couldnt get the <tt> codes to work either. Maybe Im missing something

[R1chard]

I thought Wingdings was found on about 99.7% of all computers? It's in Win3.1, Win95/98/NT/2000/XP, and Mac OS7/8/9/X, and some versions of Linux. (although admittedly, Webdings and Wingdings 2 are not as common)
It also comes with some browsers, and is even installed with most office packages! I think it might even be on WebTV. Unless you're running Solaris, OS2 or an Amiga, then you've pretty much got it.

[DrDoc]

Unfortunately, there used to be two different versions of Wingdings...

[zoobie]

Web/wingdings comes with most OS's...but it has to be installed. If the user has chosen a minimal install, it's probably missing.

I tried to use &diams; arbitrarily assigning a font (verdana I think) to it...which didn't work. I had to assign another font (tahoma) before &diams; would show.