Considering the success of my
gmail emoticons page, and due to
popular request, here's how to
type those other secret
characters that sometimes
popup in messages.
Yes, I mean the other smiley
faces (☺☻), the heart symbol (♥)
, and many others (♪☼♂...) !
These are known as Alt-code
characters, and they've been
around for a very long time.
Although we now have Unicode
that allow for thousands of
different characters and
symbols, for a long time
computers could only represent
255 different characters. Besides
the regular symbols, letters,
numbers, and punctuation marks,
a few of them represented
codes that had no visual
meaning, like "end-of-line",
"carriage-return", and the like...
But, even though they had no
visual representation didn't stop
engineers from placing some nice
visuals on it. :)
So... how can you type these
weird and secret strange
characters? It's quite easy...
You just need to press and
hold the ALT key while you
type its "alt-code" number in
the numeric keypad.
Just try it: place your cursor in
a text input area and press and
hold the ALT key, and press the
"1" key in the numeric keypad
(make sure you have "num lock"
on, so you can type numbers
instead of using it as cursor
keypad.)
ALT + 1 gives you: ☺
ALT + 2 gives you: ☻
ALT + 3 gives you: ♥
and so on...
Here's a table of most useful
secret alt-code chars available:
☺ 1 α 224
☻ 2 ß 225
♥ 3 Γ 226
♦ 4 π 227
♣ 5 Σ 228
♠ 6 σ 229
• 7 µ 230
◘ 8 τ 231
○ 9 Φ 232
◙ 10 Θ 233
♂ 11 Ω 234
♀ 12 δ 235
♪ 13 ∞ 236
♫ 14 φ 237
☼ 15 ε 238
► 16 ∩ 239
◄ 17 ≡ 240
↕ 18 ± 241
‼ 19 ≥ 242
¶ 20 ≤ 243
§ 21 ⌠ 244
▬ 22 ⌡ 245
↨ 23 ÷ 246
↑ 24 ≈ 247
↓ 25 ° 248
→ 26 ∙ 249
← 27 · 250
∟ 28 √ 251
↔ 29 ⁿ 252
▲ 30 ² 253
▼ 31 ■ 254
From the code 32 (space
character) up to code 127 you
get the regular numbers,
letters, punctuation marks and
symbols. From 128 to 255, you
get some few extra characters,
like accented characters used in
other languages (like: áêü) and
some more symbols (µ¼ Σ√...)
A few other useful symbols (you
do need to type the leading zero
in the alt-code):
¼ 0188 ½ 0189 ¾ 0190
™ 0153 © 0169 ® 0174
Hope you find it useful! :)
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