✓ ! ✗ is not working IE

Question

I use ✓ ! &cross; for show ✓ ! ✗ symbols and it is works for major browser Firefox, chrome and others. But they is not working for internet explore. Can't i use these any more? What are the alternatives for these symbol?

Answer 1

Those references are undefined in any HTML specification, but proposed in the HTML5 Candidate Recommendation. Around 2011, some browsers started supporting them, and IE 10 has joined the gang, but e.g. IE 9 renders them literally, like any pre-2011 browser.

So these references should not be used yet, if ever. They add nothing to the expressive power of the language, but they cause serious incompatibilities, for a long time. As @Quentin recommends, use the characters themselves or (if you do not know how to enter them, or if you are forced to use an encoding other than UTF-8) numeric character references like ✓ and ✗. (There is not reason to use a reference for the “!” character – ! denotes just the common exclamation mark we have in our keyboards. You can find the Unicode numbers (needed for the numeric references) from the same source in which the named references are listed in HTML5 CR.

As a completely different problem with some of these characters, the font being used may well lack them, and this may force browsers to pick them up from other fonts (possibly creating a stylistic mismatch) or, in rather old systems, fail to render them at all. You should thus make sure that some of the fonts in the font-family list you use for the text containing them, in an acceptable shape.

Answer 2

Those entities are not defined in the HTML 4 specification.

Use literal characters (with a suitable encoding such as UTF-8) or numeric character references.