Go to the Russian language version of this page

Russian in Browsers/Mail/News under Windows

Paul Gorodyansky 'Cyrillic (Russian): instructions for Windows and Internet'

Note. This page discusses only MS Windows platform.
For other platforms such as UNIX or Mac, please,
see a section of my site called "More Russification (Q&A, links)"



Important!   This page provides tune-up instructions for some Windows applications such as browsers, e-mail programs, etc.
But before you tune-up some Windows programs, you must tune-up Windows itself:

               

TABLE OF CONTENTS



Russian in MS Internet Explorer ver. 5 or higher

NOTE. Recently there were many complains that one could NOT write in Russian in Internet Explorer - in the text input fields on Web pages.

A user inputs Russian text in a usual way but sees something like this on screen:
................... 38B5 G09=8:C

This is not related to Cyrillic tune-up of your computer.
It means that a plugin connected to your browser causes such thing.
I have here a page where I collect related information and offer some solutions:

Internet Explorer: gibberish on display while typing Russian

Reminder:   There is no reason to read about the tune-up for this program if you haven't learned yet about Windows itself - Cyrillic fonts and Russian encodings. It is covered in a section of my site called "Cyrillic fonts and encodings under Windows".
That is, it's assumed that you have your Cyrillic fonts activated and become familiar with Cyrillic encodings used under MS Windows.

It's also assumed that you have Russian keyboard tools activated as described in the "Typing Russian on any keyboard: standard and phonetic layout" section of my site, if you are going to write in Russian on, say, an Internet Search site.

I've read several times that a user should disable the following feature to work normally with Russian sites:
  View / Encoding - uncheck "Auto-Select"



There is nothing more to tune-up in Internet Explorer, it's ready for the browsing of Russian sites (that is, tuning-up Windows itself - Cyrillic fonts and, if needed, keyboard tools - allows Internet Explorer successfully work with Russian Web sites).



Now, when you browse Russian Web sites, you will be able to select a Cyrillic encoding (if the site did not do it for you by letting your browser know what is the encoding):



You can use my Test Pages of this page's Chapter 4 to verify that.

Next section is devoted to MS Internet Explorer ver. 4.

to the Table of Contents

Russian in MS Internet Explorer 4

Here are the steps for a one-time initial tune-up of MS Internet Explorer 4 for Russian:

Now, when you browse Russian Web sites, you will be able to select a Cyrillic encoding:

You can use my Test Pages of this page's Chapter 4 to verify that.

Next section is devoted to MS IE 3.02.

to the Table of Contents

Russian in MS Internet Explorer 3.02

Note. I don't know if Russian works in earlier than 3.02 versions of MS IE.

MS IE 3.02 under Windows 95/98/ME or Windows NT 4.0

MS IE 3.02 requires some additional software for Cyrillic - "Pan European" version of Microsoft's
"Internet Explorer 3.0 Multilanguage Support for Windows 95 & NT 4.0",
offered as a self-extracting archive file ie3lpkpe.exe.

You can download the file ie3lpkpe.exe from one of the following sites
(Microsoft site does not have this file anymore - IE3 is too old, so I am giving several sites, because some of them may follow Microsoft and remove this file from their site):

After you get this file, you need to execute it (just double-click on it in Windows Explorer) and follow installation instructions.
Then restart your computer.

MS IE 3.02 is ready now to work with Russian Web sites - find a globe-like icon at the right bottom corner if its window and click on it. You will see available encodings, including two used for Russian -
  Cyrillic(Windows-1251) and Cyrillic(KOI8-R).

MS IE 3.02 under Windows 3.1 or 3.11

Under Windows 3.1/3.11 you need to install in IE 3.02 those free non-Microsoft Russian fonts that were offered in the section of my site called "Cyrillic fonts and encodings under Windows":
"ER Bukinist 1251" and "ER Kurier 1251".

Here are the steps for selecting these fonts in MS IE 3.02, but I am not sure that it is 100% correct. If not, it should be something very similar to this one:

To Table of Contents

IE ver. 3 and 4: Links for the subjects that were not discussed here



These are the links to the resources that may help you to tune-up MS IE and its partner programs for Russian (if you don't find something on a page, you always can ask an author of the site, for instance, by e-mail):

Instruction
 Author

'Support for Russian language', in Russian
Microsoft Corp.

Russian in Forte Agent (in Russian)
K.Kazarnovsky, Russia

'Russian in Eudora'
LvNet-Teleport, Latvia
'KOI8-R plug-in for Eudora' (in Russian)
 
 E.Surovegin, Russia
 

If you did not find an answer for your Cyrillic question neither on my page, nor on the pages listed above, then see below a list of the following Russian-language Newsgroups (Discussion groups, Forums) where you can find an answer or ask your question.

  1. Free News server of Microsoft Corp.:

  2. Russian Newsgroups (Forums) Relcom.* and Fido7.*

Note. Some of the Newsgroups may not be available on the News server of your Internet Service Provider. In such case you can use a free News service provided by Talk.ru, where you can read a Newsgroup (Forum) or post your question there.

    

Cyrillic Test Pages for your Browser
check Cyrillic tune-up that you performed for Internet Explorer or Netscape

Reminder:   There is no reason to read about the tune-up for these programs if you haven't learned yet about Windows itself - Cyrillic fonts and Russian encodings. It is covered in a section of my site called "Cyrillic fonts and encodings under Windows".
That is, it's assumed that you have your Cyrillic fonts activated and become familiar with Cyrillic encodings used under MS Windows.

It's also assumed that you have Russian keyboard tools activated as described in the "Typing Russian on any keyboard: standard and phonetic layout" section of my site, if you are going to write in Russian in a text input form on my Test pages.

I use Russian as an example below, but as far as I know, the same is applicable to other Cyrillic languages.

If a Russian language page does not specify which Cyrillic encoding (Character Set, Coding) it uses, then try to use both Windows-1251 and KOI8-R, one after another, until you see a normal Russian text.
My pages are of this type - you need manually switch to a needed Cyrillic encoding via your browser's menu.

After you tune-up your browser for Cyrillic according to the intructions of this page, you can switch your browser to needed Cyrillic Character Set Encoding and use my Test Pages to verify your settings.

The steps of using a browser's menu to switch to the needed Cyrillic encoding were given above, in a chapter devoted to MS Internet Explorer and a chapter devoted to Netscape, but I will repeat them here (newest versions are listed first):

So if you have finished a Cyrillic tune-up for your browser, then test it now.
I have prepared 2 Russian Test pages - in KOI8-R and CP-1251(win) encoding.
These test pages allow you to check both Proportional (Variable Width) fonts and Fixed fonts.

My Test pages let you also check Forms - they are at the bottom of each test page.

By switching your browser to a corresponding encoding (Character Set, Coding), check Russian on a page and in a page's form:

 

Cyrillic letters in the Title of a page (top blue line)

In many cases you can NOT see readable Russian in a Title of a page (top blue line) if you have a non-Russian MS Windows.
It's because browsers use a system font to show this Title line while usually in a non-Russian operating system only non-system fonts ("Arial", etc.) contain Cyrillic letters.

For example, MS Internet Explorer ver. 5 and higher (as well as Netscape ver. 7.1 and higher and Mozilla ver. 1.4 and higher)
can show such title only under Windows 2000/XP and not under Windows 95/98/ME/NT, while Netscape 4.x - 7.0x will not be able to do so at all.

Here is my Test Page (written really for Bookmarks issue in Netscape - it's a Title text that goes to Bookmarks) that shows such Title and explains that:

But even if my pages were Okay, sometimes you may see an unreadable Cyrillic page somewhere on the Web:

Correct encoding, but page is not readable. Why?

So, you tried to switch manually to a Cyrillic encoding, but a page is still unreadable. The cause for this may be one of the following situations (assuming that you already have tuned-up your browser correctly for Cyrillic):

To Table of Contents

Cyrillic (Russian) in Web-based Mail such as Yahoo!Mail

That is, when you work with e-mail on a Web page in a browser, and not with the help of real e-mail program such as say Outlook Express



It's assumed that you have Russian keyboard tools activated as described in the "Typing Russian on any keyboard: standard and phonetic layout" section of my site, if you are going to write in Russian.

Unlike real e-mail programs listed in the Table of Contents of this page - such as Outlook Express, MS Outlook, Mail component of Netscape/Mozilla - where a user can make configuration cnanges, Web-based Mail services - such as Yahoo!Mail, Hotmail, etc. - have their own rules for working with Cyrillic (Russian).

1. Sending Russian e-mail using Web-mail service

Unlike modern Web-based e-mail services such as Yahoo!Mail or HotMail, older services such as for example Mail2web.com, reqiure the following to send Russian e-mail normally:
before typing Russian text, a user must choose Russian encoding in the browser's menu, for example, "Cyrillic(Windows)", and only then start typing.

Yahoo!Mail nowadays uses - always - Unicode (UTF-8) encoding for each and every message you are sending.

Whether a recipient will be able to read such Russian e-mail
(where Russian text is represented as a text of UTF-8 encoding and not as a text of some Russian encoding)
or not depends on the software s/he uses.
Yahoo!Mail does form correct system header that has encoding specification:
      charset=utf-8

Modern e-mail programs such as Outlook Express, Mozilla (Thunderbird), MS Outlook would show such incoming UTF-8 letter just fine, as well as modern Web-services such as GMail or Yahoo!Mail itself or HotMail.



2. Receiving Russian e-mail using Web-mail service

Unlike modern Web-based e-mail services such as Yahoo!Mail or HotMail, older services such as for example Mail2web.com, reqiure the following to read incoming Russian e-mail:

Yahoo!Mail works with an incoming Russian (Polish, Greek, etc.) letter in the following manner:

it always uses UTF-8 encoding, that is it converts all incoming e-mails to UTF-8.

Therefore:



Disclaimer
This page is a result of my personal research, not related to a company I work for.

The author does not and cannot warrant the information, documentation, or software included in this document or the performance or results obtained by using this information, documentation, or software.
This information, documentation, and software is provided "as is".
To the extent you use or implement this information, documentation, or software in your own setting, you do so at your own risk.

To the top of the page

Paul Gorodyansky. 'Cyrillic (Russian): instructions for Windows and Internet'