This is a question that never has a proper answer, i have search the net many times and i couldnt find a solution.
xhr.open("GET", fullurl, true);
if(xhr.overrideMimeType) xhr.overrideMimeType("text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1");
xhr.send(null);
xhr.onreadystatechange = function(){
if(xhr.readyState == 4){
if(xhr.status == 200)
alert(xhr.responseText);
It works for firefox, chrome. My responseText will return char like Réunion, which will appear as weird symbols.
I tried many methods like encoding and decoding, setting header in response file which does not work. i'm out of ideas. Please help somebody.
**SOLUTION**
In your main file, make sure you set your content type and charset.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
In your AJAX-loaded page, make sure you have this at the top.
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1');
Problem solved, your a happy man. this is no longer needed.
if(xhr.overrideMimeType) xhr.overrideMimeType("text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1");