Font Selection:  It is necessary to select a font that is able to display Unicode characters.  Andalus, Arial Unicode MS, Arabic Simplified, Arabic Transparent, Lucida Sans Unicode, Microsoft Sans Serif, Tahoma, Times New Roman, and Traditional Arabic are able to display some of the Unicode fonts.  Arial Unicode MS font displays a very wide range of Unicode characters.  For most Arabic text viewing, Arabic Transparent or Traditional Arabic fonts should be suitable. 

However, if you experience difficulties, Arial Unicode MS font should be tried. The Times New Roman font that comes with Windows 2000 is a Unicode capable font, and it displays Arabic, English,  Greek, and Hebrew fonts nicely.

Internet Explorer Font Selection: First, click the mouse on Tools.

Second, click the mouse on Internet Options.

Third, click the mouse on Fonts.  In the beginning, it may be best to select Arial Unicode MS font because it can display a wide range of Unicode fonts.  However, you may find that Times New Roman has a more pleasing font face.

Encoding Selection: Next, it is necessary to select an encoding scheme that includes the Arabic Unicode number range. However, Unicode(UTF-8) should be satisfactory for most purposes, including Arabic Unicode text.

First, click the mouse on View .

Second, click the mouse on Encoding.  Third, click the mouse on Unicode (UTF-8) and deselect Auto-Select.  Deselecting Auto-Select assures that Internet Explorer will use Unicode encoding each time the program is reloaded. 

Finally, click the mouse on Refresh to activate the new settings.

After Internet Explorer has a Unicode compatible font, and the Encoding is set to Unicode, Arabic fonts should display properly.  

Test settings:  There are a couple of sites that have Unicode font pages.  The Unicode decimal number range for Arabic is 1536-1791, 64336-65023, and 65136-65279.  If Internet Explorer has been properly configured, the Arabic fonts should display properly.

Another web site has an excellent chart of the decimal number ranges of Unicode.  The 1001-2000 , 64001-64999 , and 65001-65536

Hopefully, these comments and pictures will provide you with enough information so that you will be able to view  Arabic Unicode text.  A similar procedure is followed to display Greek and Hebrew Unicode characters.  First select a Unicode font and then select the appropriate Encoding scheme.  Finally, test the settings by viewing a page that has the appropriate decimal number for the Unicode language fonts.

Normal settings:  To return to your normal settings, select the Western European (Windows) encoding scheme, activate the Auto-Select for Encoding,  and select the font of your choice.  However, if you have chosen a Unicode font that can display all of the languages that you plan to view, you can leave your browser's configuration set to view Unicode fonts.

There is additional help for Internet Explorer users at Allan Wood's site.

If there are difficulties with these browser and email configurations suggestions, please let me know.  I have not been able to do many tests.

Last edited 06-08-2000