---
title: "ASP.NET Encoding Tip from Scott Hanselman"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/4/11/aspnet-encoding-tip-from-scott-hanselman.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/4/11/aspnet-encoding-tip-from-scott-hanselman.html"
published: "2003-04-11T18:55:00"
updated: "2003-04-11T18:55:00"
tags: [".Net Quotations", "Tips & Tricks"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Tip from Scott Hanselman If your life sucks so badly that you have to support Netscape 4.x, you might want to remember that Netscape 4 never handled Unicode/UTF-8 very well. Since UTF-8 is ASP.NET's default Response…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# ASP.NET Encoding Tip from Scott Hanselman

By Roy Osherove April 11, 2003 In [.Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations), [Tips & Tricks](https://osherove.com/blog/category/tips-tricks)

**Historical article** · Originally published April 11, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

**_Tip from Scott Hanselman_**

_If your life sucks so badly that you have to support Netscape 4.x, you might want to remember that Netscape 4 never handled Unicode/UTF-8 very well.  Since UTF-8 is ASP.NET's default Response Encoding, you'll often see the Evil Black Squares  "" ©2003 displayed instead of your text._  

_Easily fixed though, change the following line in the Web.config file from_

_to:_

\[via [Wagner Blog](http://radio.weblogs.com/0101986/)\]

cool!

## More in .Net Quotations

[All posts in .Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations)

- Apr 27, 2003

    ### [Microsoft's Smart Devices Developer Community](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/4/27/microsofts-smart-devices-developer-community.html)

- Apr 16, 2003

    ### [CLR tips gold mine detected](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/4/16/clr-tips-gold-mine-detected.html)

- Mar 9, 2003

    ### [A cool macro to ease your NUnit boilerplate woes](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/9/a-cool-macro-to-ease-your-nunit-boilerplate-woes.html)

- Mar 5, 2003

    ### [Explorer Tips and tricks for the keyboard junkie](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/5/explorer-tips-and-tricks-for-the-keyboard-junkie.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/