difference in encoding IE

Anyone know the difference between Western European (Windows) and Unicode (UFT-8) encoding. I have read articles on different IT subjects and some say make sure you're in Western European and some say Unicode depending on the article and also on the webpage you read it. I tried changing from one to the other just on my home page and didn't notice any difference, unless I wasn't looking in the right places to see differences. Is there any specific encoding should be used, ie; by location? I am in the UK, if it matters. Just as an aside, I notice that when I go to save a webpage the file name is automatically given with an mht extension and not htm/l and the encoding can be changed below. I'd just like to be sure I'm working/saving in the right encoding and will not come across problems later on. Thanks for reading and in advance for any help offered. hedley

I'm not entirely sure. But, you will probably not see any difference unless you are trying to load pages in a more complex language such as chinese. English pages are all going to look the same most likely.

With the UTF-8 encoding, Unicode can be used in a convenient and backwards compatible way in environments that were designed entirely around ASCII. A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in computers.