HTMLUnicode

HTMLUnicode refers to the use of Unicode characters within HTML documents. Unicode is a universal character encoding standard designed to represent text from virtually all writing systems in the world, as well as symbols and emojis. HTML, the markup language used for creating web pages, fully supports Unicode. This means that web developers can directly embed Unicode characters in their HTML source code, or they can use character entity references to represent them.

There are two primary ways to include Unicode characters in HTML. The first is by directly typing the character if the document's encoding is set to UTF-8, which is the recommended encoding for modern web pages. For example, a developer could type the euro symbol (€) directly into the HTML. The second method involves using character entity references. These are special codes that start with an ampersand (&) followed by a name or a numeric code, and end with a semicolon (;). Named character entities are often more readable, like € for the euro symbol. Numeric character entities can be decimal, such as € for the euro symbol, or hexadecimal, such as € for the euro symbol.

The advantage of using Unicode in HTML is its ability to display a vast range of characters, ensuring that web content is accessible and accurately represented to a global audience. This is crucial for websites that contain non-Latin alphabets, mathematical symbols, scientific notations, or special characters that are not easily accessible on a standard keyboard. Properly implementing Unicode ensures that characters render correctly across different browsers and operating systems, promoting internationalization and localization efforts.