Inputting Chinese Characters in Documents, E-Mails, and Websites

For those who wish to input Chinese characters into documents, e-mails, and forms on websites it is not necessary to purchase separate and expensive software applications. Microsoft’s operating systems and Apple Computer's operating systems have the ability to input characters in many different languages other than English. The operating systems use language files that contain the necessary fonts for a particular language. Many different language files can be installed on a computer thus enabling the computer to input many different languages using the same keyboard.

Microsoft uses Input Method Editors (IMEs), often referred to as Global Input Method Editor (Global IMEs), to enable multi-language inputting in newer operating systems. Microsoft's IMEs are already supplied with the Windows XP and Windows 2000 setup disks but are not installed by default during normal setup. For Windows 95, 98, ME, and NT the IMEs need to be downloaded directly from the Microsoft website. Installing IMEs is not difficult and requires only about 10 minutes of time. All IMEs are free of charge.

Windows XP
Installing IMEs
Configuring IMEs
Windows 2000
Installing IMEs
Configuring IMEs
Windows 95,98, ME, NT with Office XP
Installing and Configuring IMEs
Windows 95, 98, ME, NT without Office XP
Installing and Configuring IMEs

Apple Computer's Mac OS9 and OSX operating systems are capable of inputting Chinese characters. The Mac OS9 operating system requires the installation of a separate Language Kit, which contains the language files, that is available on the Mac OS9 installation disk while the Mac OSX operating system comes with the necessary language files already installed but require configuration.

Mac OS9
Installing and Configuring the Language Kit
Mac OSX
Configuring Chinese

Viewing Chinese Characters on the Internet

All web browsers have the ability to display Chinese characters when viewing Chinese web pages. The various browsers view web pages using a method called encoding. Encoding is a process that takes the computer data on the web page and translates it using the fonts in the language files already installed on your operating system to render the web page properly on your web browser. Therefore, it is necessary to have the proper language files installed already on the operating system as described in the above section Inputting Chinese Characters in Documents, E-Mails, and Websites as well as to have the proper encoding setting on your web browser. Many of the newer versions of popular web browsers come with the proper encodings installed and configured to view the web pages in multi-languages and require no additional configuration. In fact, many newer versions of popular web browsers will automatically download and install the proper encodings if they come across a web page that requires an encoding that you don't already have installed on the web browser. Always try to upgrade to the very latest version of your favorite web browser.

If for some reason you have trouble viewing some web pages the web browser might require some additional configuration as described below.

Internet Explorer 5.x, 6.x, 7.x
Configuring
Gecko Based Browsers (Netscape 7.x, 8.x, Mozilla Firefox 1.x)
Configuring
Opera 7.x, 8.x, 9.x
Configuring