Different charsets and utf-8 question?

Im wondering if someone can explain exactly what

charset=utf-8


does for the browser? As far as I understand, it tells the browser to use the Unicode table for translating the hexacedimal numbers to characters? Correct?


So this means that I can mix chinese, swedish, english on a webpage and it is all shown correctly?


Am i right or wrong?


Also I read in the specs that utf-8 has a "Code unit size 8 bits "

Exactly what does this mean? It was a while since I read computer science ;)

whats the benefits of using utf-16?

/Henrik

Im bumping this thread, and add another question to it...

On my webpages I ahve problems that swedish characters are not displayed correctly... they are å, ä, ö.

The page is rendered using: "charset=utf-8"

but when I in my IE broeser select "encoding" and check, it is selected to UTF-8.

BUT the page is not displayed correctly. It only displays correct when I change to "Western European (Windows)"

WHy is it like that, and what can I do to remedy it? WHy doesn't it work with utf-8???


And the last question, which tool is best if I want to examine how the html page looks like on hex level? I want to compare the character representation in hex with the hex representation in the unicode table!!! Should I use hexedit or something isimilar? Please help me to trouble shoot this!

/Henrik