Read Chinese On the Internet

When you visit the Chinese Web site ,you might not be able to browse them. You may want to know why you can not browse them. This is because Chinese characters are not supported under the standard English and Western Windows environment. you can learn how to use Chinese Software; to create a Chinese environment here. This way, you won't have to buy MS Chinese Windows in either BIG5 (HK and Taiwan) or GB (Mainland China and Singapore) in order to view/write Chinese in Windows' applications, including Internet Applications, such as NetScape, MS IE, or Mosaic. For users of Windows95 and NT3.5, 4.0 English versions, you may use MS Chinese extension(adding Chinese system fonts to your system). 

Microsoft has released its final version of IE5.0  and one interesting feature is the enhanced Chinese support (or International language supports). After the installation of two Chinese fonts (BIG5 & GB), it will display
BIG5, GB and HZ codes. When you finished installing IE5.0, including the two Chinese fonts, then run IE5.0 for the first time, You should see a little language control icon on your right side of the task bar (inside the system tray). You
may add Chinese languages (GB & BIG5) at several places like Control Panel -> Internet Options -> General ->Languages... -> Add -> select Chinese there ... The same is available at IE5.0 window under Tools. Another place you may do this is right click the language control icon -> Properties... -> Add -> ... When the above is done, you may see the added Chinese either by clicking the language control icon or View -> Encoding at IE5.0 window. By the way, you can add an Encoding item to your IE5.0 toolbar by clicking on toolbar with the right mouse button-> Customize... -> Add Encoding (to the right side).

Language codes can also be "Auto-Selected", from View -> Encoding -> Auto-Select. I had no problem with GB & BIG5,
but HZ code is not auto-displayed. Of course, with manual selection, HZ is displayed correctly most of the time. They need to work on HZ code.

Some of you already know that it is possible to input Chinese in web based forms, Outlook express and Outlook98. Microsoft calls it IME (Input Method Editor). A brief test indicated that web based form input is just fine while having trouble with input in Outlook98 (could be due to the fact that I installed Outlook earlier). The IE5.0 setup will install IME to your harddrive and
the help file shortcuts can be found by clicking Start -> Programs -> Microsoft Global IME. 

Chinese Star

CStar 2.97 works in Win98/95/3.x, and CStar 3.0 in Windows NT 4.x/3.51. Their software is compatible with MS Office 97 (MS Word97, etc.) and other Unicode-compliant, Windows 95/98 software; free demos available; etc. Other products include Han Wang OCR, and Han Wang Pen and Tablet.  

Very good auto-GB, BIG5 and HZ displays.
RichWin Internet new version (4.3 final beta) has a very useful feature: Auto-HZ detection (it will show Chinese on your screen if you have GB, HZ, BIG5 codes together!). No more switching is needed. Under  Windows 3.x/95/98/NT software, including RichWin 2000 for Windows (for E/P-Win95/98) that supports MS Office 2000,Chinese-English translation systems;
PenPower products (Mandarin VoiceWriter, Cantonese Voice Writer, as well as Chinese OCR/scanning, spellchecker, this works with
both 16- and 32-bit browsers. 

Twin Bridge

Chinese Partner 2000, with built-in Chinese enabling system which is fully compatible with MS Win98 and MS Office97/2000, including compatibility with FarEast version of MS Office 97 (and 2000?).Chinese Pen (handwriting-recognition), SharpEye2.0 (OCR), English-Chinese Two-way Dictionary V3.0,  Its recent release AsianViewer 1.0 can auto-dispaly GB/HZ/BIG5 codes,

NanJi Star

Their NJStar CWP 4.31 is a stand-alone Chinese word processor designed to input,
edit, format, convert and print Chinese documents on all language versions of Win95/98/NT/2000(16&32-bit),
(Current version is 1.80.) NJStar Communicator 2.2 is their software for viewing, input, and CJK code
conversion;auto detects GB, Big5, HZ and
ISO-2022-CN, and auto supports
All Types of Asian Encoding Standards, All Windows Platforms.

Sunrise

Developers of (Xin)TianMa software, this is AsiaCom's site for KEY/SunRise2001, their CJK software for E-Win95/98/NT (no dongle required) that works as a stand-alone program with its own full-screen editor, and interacts
through standard copy/cut/paste procedures with other Windows applications (MS Office97/2000, etc.).  AsiaCom also has an online Big5 to/from GB URL Real-time Conversion Engine.