[Javascript] Alphabet buttons & code pages

[Alvin Fisher]

Hi,

I am new to the group.  I know a little about JavaScript, but not all that much.

I have made a multi-language Christian song index.  Here is the URL, so that folks can look and see what I am talking about: http://www.volstate.net/~fisher/hymnintl  The top frame has alphabet buttons that show the first letters of the songs in the chosen language that are in the index.  With English, for example, all the letters except X are displayed, because there are English songs that begin with every letter except X.  I don't think this works in Netscape, however, because I don't know how to make the buttons disappear in Netscape.  Perhaps I could use some other technique in Netscape to indicate that certain letters are not available.

To include Russian, I wanted to use the same set of buttons, but just change the letter that was displayed.  I tried changing the "Value" associated with the button, but this didn't work.  I tried loading a different htm into the top frame, but I didn't manage.  Finally, I created a set of buttons that will show only when the language chosen uses the Cyrillic alphabet.  So, if you choose Russian (and perhaps in the future Bulgarian, Ukrainian or Serbian), the Roman alphabet disappears and the Cyrillic one becomes visible.  But, if you choose a language like English that uses the Roman alphabet, the Cyrillic one disappears.  In order to make the additional set of buttons visible I had to increase the size of the top window, which decreases the size of the bottom window.

So far, it works pretty well, except that my HTML editor doesn't like my command to display Russian, which is: 
    <META http_equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html" charset="ISO-8859-5">
However, this is the only command I have discovered that makes Internet Explorer display Russian consistently. I tried using a different one I found, that included charset as part of content.  HoTMetaL liked that command, but Internet Explorer did strange things with it.  Would Unicode apply to my situation, and if so, how do you use it?

If I want to include other alphabets later on, such as Korean, Hebrew or Arabic, and if I still can not change the display on the buttons, and still can not load a different htm into the top frame, and don't want to make the top frame any larger, is there a way to make scroll bar on the top frame programmatically scroll down to the alphabet buttons for the related language?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Alvin Fisher

Right now, I have 
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