Does every browser support all Unicode?

Question

I want to reduce the number of HTTP requests using Unicode instead of small image icons.

Icons that I would like to use include ✔, ►, etc.

For a complete list of all required characters, see here.

• Are all browsers supported with these default characters?
• If not supported by default, can I add support for these characters?
• What CSS and HTML are needed to add these characters to a web page using a cross browser?

In addition, I am making a Unicode website that uses the following language:

यो भाषामा म वेबसाईट बनाउँदै छु 

• Is it possible that this language is displayed in every browser and every operating system?
• If you can provide this support, what CSS and HTML are needed for this?
• Do I need to enable webfont for this?
• What websites can I use and how can I add them to the cross browser?

Answer 1

This is a font issue, not browser support. Prevent serious errors in the browser itself, if the user has a font installed with the character that you are trying to use, it should be displayed without problems.

Now intersecting all the glyphs in all the fonts embedded in every common operating system is a completely different question, and it’s a little harder to answer.

In the case of small icons, the most reliable solution is to use the CSS @font-face rule to ask the browser to load a particular font. Then you know for sure that the user has the appropriate font installed. There are even some fonts designed specifically for this use, with added icons: " Awesome Font " is a well-known example.

In the case of foreign text: presumably your audience consists of people who can read the script, right? In this case, they almost certainly already have font support - many of them can have the entire interface in one language!

Answer 2

More general characters can be seen by everyone. But Asian fonts tend to be troublesome. As far as I can tell, not every browser in every operating system can view this font. My Windows 7 Ultimate computer in Chrome, Opera, and IE can view these characters. Like my Android phone 4.1 in the default browser.

I do not see every character on this list, but I see the vast majority of them. I see almost nothing after "Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A"

Answer 3

No browser supports all Unicode, or is required for this. Specifications do not require all characters or any particular subset of them to be displayed properly. This would be almost impossible to do, because no font can span all Unicode, and even combining public fonts does it.

Thus, the question should be rephrased in terms of font support for specific characters. In addition, you should use font-family ads that make reasonable efforts to use appropriate fonts. The reason is that browsers still have difficulty returning the font: they do not always automatically find the appropriate font for backup if the declared fonts or the default browser font do not contain a specific character.

Using a downloadable font (web font) may be part of the answer, but it will probably be redundant if you just want to use multiple icons. For a text written in Devanagari, its probably the best approach; the only commonly installed font that supports it is Arial Unicode MS, and people who don't have Microsoft Office installed probably didn't receive it. Therefore, consider using, for example, either FreeSans or FreeSerif from GNU Freefont as a downloadable font via @font-face .

General information on the topic: Guidelines for using special characters in HTML .