Ø character input in IE7

[Chewy509]

Hi Guys,

A Danish friend of mine recently made the move from IE6 to IE7, and while is happy with IE7 is having some trouble with keyboard input.

His keyboard is US English and spends most of his time in English, however occasionally has the need to type in Danish. Rather than switching keyboard layouts from English to Danish (which moves keys around), he just uses the ALT+keycode to enter the 6 additional characters he needs.

Four of those keycodes are working fine in IE7, however 'Ø' (ALT+0216) and 'ø' (ALT+248 ) do not? The keycode works fine in all other applications he uses, so the problem is limited to IE7.

If he switches to the Danish keyboard layout, that particular character works fine?

Has anyone else come across this or similar input problems? And if so, was there a fix?

PS. The other keycodes that work fine are:

Æ - Alt+0198 æ - Alt+0230
Å - Alt+0197 å - Alt+0229

PPS. I tried these key combos in FF2, and ALT+248 doesn't work there either?

 

[Chewy509]

Worked it out, it's a bug in IE7... (and a few other apps).

We've switch his keyboard layout from "US" to "US-International", which changes the functionality of the right ALT key (makes it AltGr).

To access the additional characters he needs, he can just use the right ALT key, plus the required key, eg AltGr+L = ø, AltGr+Z = æ, AltGr+w = å, etc.

So all sorted.

 

[mubs]

Is there a setting to turn on Unicode support in IE7 and FF2? If so maybe it's off by default?

 

[Chewy509]

Is there a setting to turn on Unicode support in IE7 and FF2? If so maybe it's off by default?

None that I've seen.

But it strange that any application can capture the ALT+keycode sequence...

 

[Howell]

ha, I haven't used alt-keys since 1989 and umlauts. I'm woefully ignorant of international settings such as these.

If international keyboards have the potential to move keys around are they designed to be more efficient than the qwerty keyboard (ala Dvorak))?

 

[ddrueding]

I've had a fun time playing with Russian keyboards lately, and apparently there are 2 versions. The first is the one supported by MS; a complete relocation of all keys into something that probably makes sense to someone. The second is identical to an English keyboard wherever possible, replacing the letters they don't have with the letters we don't have. This makes a lot of sense for people (like me) transitioning from one to the other.

 

[Chewy509]

If international keyboards have the potential to move keys around are they designed to be more efficient than the qwerty keyboard (ala Dvorak))?

In many respects, yes for the later developed layouts, or they are simple the native form of QWERTY for that particular country.

We just have to remember that most keyboard layouts were designed in a time where mechanical type-writers were the only option, so items like internationalisation weren't even considered... (And I'm sure many kids today have never seen let alone used a "real" type-writer either).