Skip Header
Teaching and Learning with Technology
Computing With Accents and Foreign Scripts
TLT Home : TLT Suggestions Skip Menu
LOCATION: Basic Setup » Browser Setup » Opera

Configuring Opera

Below are instructions for configuring Opera versions 7,8,9 to read Web sites not written in the English alphabet.
Note: Opera version 7-8 is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X , but not Mac System 9.

Manually Switch Encoding

If you see Roman alphabet gibberish (e.g. *a&h!!) instead of the correct script, you may need to For some Web sites, such as www.csssm.org (Chinese Simplified), you will need to manually switch from Western encoding view.

Example of Roman Character Gibberish

Roman Character Gibberish - Window says µ Ú 227 Æ Ú

CHANGE ENCODING
  1. Under the View menu, select Encoding
  2. If necessary switch from Western to an appropriate encoding.
  3. If there is more than one option per script, select one until the page displays properly.
  4. AFTER you leave the site, you will have to switch your browser back to Western >> ISO-8859-1.

Top of Page

Change Default Font

  1. Determine which encoding and fonts are needed for your script from the individual By Language pages.
  2. Windows: Open the Preferences window under the Tools (Opera 9) menu or File menu (earlier versions of Opera)
    Macintosh: Open the Preferences window under the Opera menu.
  3. If you are using Opera 9 or 8, click the Advanced tab in the top. Opera 7 users can skip to the next step.

    Opera 8 Preference Panel
    Screen capture
  4. You should see a window with a list of options on the left. Click on the Fonts and colors links.

    Opera Font Preferences
    Screen capture
  5. To access font preferences for non-English scripts, click the International Options button at the bottom.

    Opera Font Preferences, International Option
    Screen Capture, Set to Georgian Fonts

  6. Select a Writing System from drop-down menu.
  7. Select a Normal font and a Monospace font. A Monospace font is one in which all the characters take up the same amount of space and is associated with older computer terminals.
    This is plain text.
  8. If no fonts are listed in the menus, then you need to install fonts designed for that encoding. Check the Encoding by Script page to see a list of recommended fonts by script.
  9. Click OK to close the International Fonts window. Click OK again to close the Preferences window.

Top of Page

©Penn State University, 2000-2007.
This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).
Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.
Last Modified: Thursday, 26-Apr-2007 10:30:55 EDT