Viewing Blogs Created By "blogger"

[JDoors]

I'll put the "near-fix" first: I searched and destroyed all "google" cookies. One of those buggers was telling IE to display Blogger-sourced blogs in Chinese/Japanese.

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That fixed some random text on blogger sites and allows me to read, say, the reply sections (which I couldn't before). However, foreign text shows up occasionally, AND ... At least one site (American or Canadian, I haven't been able to read it for so long I don't remember which) is entirely in Chinese/Japanese. Hmm.

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I don't have a blog myself (I'm too boring) so I have no blog software/code on my system that I'm aware of.

So why is it when I visit a blog created by Blogger software the text is in Japanese or Chinese (I can't tell the difference so I don't know which)? I can't get help with the problem because I can't read anything to, say, send an e-mail asking for help. The Blogger help site, once I somehow got past the pages in Japanese, had a few posts regarding Japanese but it was all like "How can I blog in Japanese" or "My blog shows up in Japanese" both of which requires changing code IN the blog itself. But I don't have a blog.

Another suggestion for problems was to use something other than IE, but that was obviously just bias against IE (it shows up anywhere there's any problem whatsoever -- USE FIREFOX and live a long and healthy life!).

My timezone is set to U.S. Central, I keep the time updated via an online atomic clock, though I have language packs intalled in IE I never intentionally visit foreign language sites.

I delete most cookies every day (except for sites like this where I use auto-login), and this problem shows up no matter when or where I encounter Blogger sites.

I might try "hiding" the few cookies left for a while to see if ALL Blogger sites check ANY cookies for language (doubtful that would even work).

Can't think of where else Blogger's getting the idea I want to view their content in Japanese/Chinese whenever and wherever I encounter it.

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I deleted ALL language packs and removed all language options from IE Options except English. It made a difference. Now instead of Chinese/Japanese I get squares in place of most text. At least numbers now show up in Arabic/English, I guess that's something.

I played around with IE "Encoding" (from the menu when you rightclick a page) but the only option other than unicode are "foreign" languages or cryptically titled ones that make no difference (eg. Western European -windows-), so no help there.

Edited July 25, 2007 by JDoors