Can use of special characters in coding be a problem for users somehow?

Question

I have a website with UTF-8 format on all pages.

The website is in Swedish so there are three special characters...

Using these characters in the code (values, ID:s, names etc) works fine on my computer and my browsers, but I wonder if it does work the same on all browsers?

In other words, do you think this will be a problem?

Thanks

Answer 1

It's OK as long as your application, and other applications that you talk with, know that the text is UTF-8 encoded.

Answer 2

It can be an issue. You'll need to make sure to set the correct character encoding on anything you're sending so the receiving computer will know how to interpret it. There's a good introduction to character encoding on the Joel On Software blog.