How do I read Chinese on Internet Explorer?

Internet Explorer can support Chinese without any other programs. All you need is the right font, and there are many good free fonts you can download. For Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME, the best method is to download Microsoft's free Chinese fonts and input methods for Simplified and Traditional Chinese. For Windows 2000 and XP, Chinese support is built in and just needs to be activated.

Installing these language packs will automatically set up Internet Explorer for Chinese.

Now as you surf around different Chinese websites, two situations may occur. Some web pages "know" that they are in Chinese, and the browser automatically knows to use the Chinese fonts to display them. For web pages that do not have this information, you can manually change to Chinese. On Internet Explorer, this can be done from "View" and then "Fonts", or in later versions "View" then "Encodings".

These fonts will also allow you to read (in Netscape Messenger and Outlook) and write (in Outlook) Chinese in e-mails.

There are other fonts you can use on Windows instead of the Microsoft fonts. One possibility is the Bitstream Cyberbit font. The above method should also work with browsers on other operating systems after obtaining Chinese fonts.

How do I display and type Chinese on my computer?

Both Windows 2000 and Windows XP already include Chinese support. It just needs to be turned on. Microsoft also sells versions of Windows where the interface is in Chinese.

If you already have an English of Windows 95/98/ME, then you can use a program that adds Chinese capabilities to your existing programs. Program like this include TwinBridge Chinese Partner and UnionWay for Windows and the Chinese Language Kit (CLK) for Macintosh that comes with MacOS 9. Visit the Chinese Mac Home for more on using Chinese on the Mac. I don't know of a program like this for Unix.

For an increasing number of programs, all you need is a Chinese font to display Chinese. These programs incude Netscape Communicator, Office 97/2000/XP, and Microsoft Explorer. You can find both simplified and traditional Chinese fonts from Microsoft.