[javascript] Enable UTF-8 encoding for JavaScript

I don't know how should I titled this question but hope my friends will understand the problem and will help me :)

I want to show log message in arabic language using JavaScript alert() function, for which I code:

alert('???? ??? ????????');

which means

alert('Enter opening price');

but when i save the .js file Dreamweaver says

and if I run the script browser says

this page contains

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

and i am using a lot of text in arabic which works fine.

now how can I use alert for different language?

The encoding for the page is not set correctly. Either add a header

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

or use set the appropriate http header.

Content-Type:text/html; charset=UTF-8

Firefox also allows you to change the encoding in View -> Character encoding.

If that's ok, I think javascript should handle UTF8 just fine.

RobW is right on the first comment. You have to save the file in your IDE with encoding UTF-8. I moved my alert from .js file to my .html file and this solved the issue cause Visual Studio saves .html with UTF-8 encoding.

just add your script like this:

<script src="/js/intlTelInput.min.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I think you just need to make

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">

Before calling your .js files or code

Try to put in the head section of your html the following:

<meta charset='utf-8'>

I think this need to be the fist in head section. More information about charset: Meta Charset

I too had this issue, I would copy the whole piece of code and put in Notepad, before pasting in Notepad, make sure you save the file type as ALL files and save the doc as utf-8 format. then you can paste your code and run, It should work. ?????? obiviously means unreadable characters.

Just like any other text file, .js files have specific encodings they are saved in. This message means you are saving the .js file with a non-UTF8 encoding (probably ASCII), and so your non-ASCII characters never even make it to the disk.

That is, the problem is not at the level of HTML or <meta charset> or Content-Type headers, but instead a very basic issue of how your text file is saved to disk.

To fix this, you'll need to change the encoding that Dreamweaver saves files in. It looks like this page outlines how to do so; choose UTF8 without saving a Byte Order Mark (BOM). This Super User answer (to a somewhat-related question) even includes screenshots.

Same problem here, solved with this: In Eclipse (with .js file open and on focus), go to, "File", "Properties", "Resource", "Text file encoding" choose "Other:" UTF-8, put correct characters code inside the code save your file and you are done!

This is a quite old request to reply but I want to give a short answer for newcommers. I had the same problem while working on an eight-languaged site. The problem is IDE based. The solution is to use Komodo Edit as code-editor. I tried many editors until I found one which doesnt change charset-settings of my pages. Dreamweaver (or almost all of others) change all pages code-page/charset settings whenever you change it for page. When you have changes in more than one page and have changed charset of any file then clicked "Save all", all open pages (including unchanged but assumed changed by editor because of charset) are silently re-assigned the new charset and all mismatching pages are broken down. I lost months on re-translating messages again and again until I discovered that Komodo Edit keeps settings separately for each file.

For others, I just had a similar problem and had to copy all code from my file, put it to simple notepad, save it with utf-8 coding and then replace my original file.

The problem at my side was caused by using PSpad editor.