How to read Chinese on Computer

Guest · Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:36 pm Post subject: How to read Chinese on Computer

How do I read Chinese on Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer?

Both of these browsers can support Chinese without any other programs. All you need is the right font, and there are many good free fonts you can download. The best method is to download Microsoft's free language packs (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/downloads/recommended/ime/install.mspx) and input methods for Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Installing these language packs will automatically set up Internet Explorer for Chinese. Netscape still needs one more step. From Netscape's main menu, select "Edit", then "Preferences". In the window that appears, select "Appearance" and "Fonts". First select "Simplified Chinese" for the encoding, and choose "MS Song" or "MS Hei" for the proportional and fixed length fonts. For the "Traditional Chinese Encoding", select "MingLiU" as the font. Selecting a larger font size might also be easier on your eyes.

Now as you surf around different Chinese websites, two situations may occur. Some web pages "know" that they are in Chinese, and the browser automatically knows to use the Chinese fonts to display them. For web pages that do not have this information, you can manually change to Chinese. On Netscape, this is done from "View" and then "Character Set" on the main menu. On Internet Explorer, this can be done from "View" and then "Fonts".

These fonts will also allow you to read (in Netscape Messager and Outlook) and write (in Outlook) Chinese in e-mails.