Designing for Overseas Chinese Readers: Some Guidelines

Introduction
Font Size, Typeface and Characters per Line
HTML Coding: Charset Code
HTML Coding: Page Titles
Display of Different Character Sets: Solution One
Display of Different Character Sets: Solution Two
Summary
References

Adaptive Web Sites: An Introduction

Designing Effective Online Press Rooms

TradeOff Cube: A Graphical User Interface Device

By Li Cao
Page 5 of 8

Display of Different Character Sets: Solution One

Nielsen [4] emphasizes the importance of giving users the freedom to choose her favorite language when content negotiation between the user's client and the server is not widely used. Undoubtedly, the major principles he mentions still apply when we are designing a website or the part of a website that targets overseas Chinese. Still, the case of Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese presents some unique problems.

If the user uses a pre-5.0 Internet Explorer that does not support auto-install feature, or browses the web on a network station that does not allow auto-install for security reasons, she will not see Chinese displayed in the browser window if a Chinese font is not installed.

In such a situation, a link leading to a page that tells her how to download free third-party software that renders Chinese will be very helpful. As the user cannot see Chinese text displayed correctly before installation of such software, the link and the webpage that instructs her on the software download should be presented in a text-as-image. Fig. 2 shows a home page that contains such a link, while Fig. 3 depicts the instructions page that describes how to download such software. Please note the paragraphs are actually one image. Fig. 4 shows the another web portal that has such a link on its webpage, but the fact that the link is given in the text form renders it totally useless.

	Fig. 2: The web portal home page at chinese.yahoo.com has a link leading to a page that describes where to download free software to render Chinese in browsers. Note the link in the oval at the bottom is an image so it can be displayed even if the rest of the page is in a mess.
	Fig. 3: A webpage that includes a GIF image showing instructions on how to get Chinese displayed in a web browser. From chinese.yahoo.com.
	Fig. 4: The sina.com.cn homepage. Although it does contain a link that leads to a text-as-image page, the link in the oval is still text-based and would not display correctly if no Chinese font has been installed.

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Last revised 12/1/2001.