& or & in browser title bar.

Looks kind of funny

[CSS_Kidd]

This may be a weird question but of all the years I have been web designing I have never come across this or thought about it really.

Why does an Ampersand ( & ) display like a cracked out backwards 3 with a lowercase t coming of the right of it when placed in the tittle of a page.

I have tried both & and & and it still looks the same. What I don't get is that it looks fine in the tab but not on the browser title bar.

No biggie really. Just wanted to know if anyone had an explanation for this.

[edited by: CSS_Kidd at 4:20 pm (utc) on May 22, 2009]

[tedster]

As I understand it, the title bar is displaying the browser's default font, which was bundled with the original installation. I agree that it seems odd to see a different font in the tab. Maybe it's an issue with old, not-updated browser code?

[g1smd]

Which browser are we talking about?

[swa66]

How a title or tab is rendered is dependent on the OS+browser combination. Actually even IF it is rendered is dependent on it. E.g. safari on iphone doesn't render titles.

Encoding ampersands (and other reserved characters) is required AFAIK.

[RonPK]

"a cracked out backwards 3 with a lowercase t coming of the right of it"

Well, after all the & is an E joined with a t. Et, which means and in Latin. </pedant>

[CSS_Kidd]

g1smd: The only browser that renders it is Safari. And of course Chrome doesn't count... it only has tabs and no title bar.

RonPK: Wow, learn something new everyday... can't wait for that question to come up on trivia night!

swa66: The same goes for browser skins. Found 2 different FF skins that will render the title bar.