Sometimes, when you’re adding text to a web page, especially in a foreign language line French, you may encounter a bunch of accented characters that will show up as garbage in your browser unless you convert them to HTML character entities.

For example, the word Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn would be converted to Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn for safe display in all browsers.

Here are some web based tools that can automate this process for you.

• http://web.forret.com/tools/html.asp?inputtext=I%F1t%EBrn%E2ti%F4n%E0liz%E6ti%F8n
• http://code.cside.com/3rdpage/us/entity/converter.html

If you’d like to use a font in your website that isn’t already included on most computers, you can import them using @font-face in your CSS. In the following example, I’m importing the Lucida Grande font. The first block is for the normal font weight and the second is for bold. If a visitor already has the Lucida Grande font on their computer, the website will automatically use it instead of download the fonts from ../fonts into their browser’s cache. This is done by specifying the “local” commands. [..]

If you’d like to specify your own list bullets using images or special characters, here’s one way to do it. In your CSS, add the following code which removes the default list style, adds a small black right-pointing triangle and a space before your list content, and colors lists items.

[..]

I’ve begun to start using console.log() to display variable values in Firebug’s console window to help with debugging. After everything was working in Firefox and Chrome, I noticed my javascript wasnt’ working at all in IE. Turns out IE doesn’t support console.log().

Reminder to self: Comment out all “console.log()” references before deploying.

This is the 2nd time I’ve come across this. Hopefully I won’t have to five more times before it sticks.

If you’re looking for low-cost cell phone service, here are a few that look interesting:

• Virgin Mobile
  $35 per month pay-as-you-go talk/text/data plan supporting Android phones
• Republic Wireless
  $19 per month. Uses hybrid wi-fi/cell instant switching technology so you talk more over wi-fi. Currently supports LG Optimus Android phone only.