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In chat there was an emoji icon posted recently. You can view it here. I am using Google Chrome and I can't see the icon. I can, however, see them on my iPad. How can I view them in Google Chrome on my Mac?

For clarification: I am running Snow Leopard (10.6.8).

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Interesting! I didn't notice this. – gentmatt Feb 15 '12 at 20:02
Can you see any of these: ๐Ÿ˜„ ๐ŸŒ€ โŒ ๐Ÿ‘ – timothymh Feb 15 '12 at 21:11
@TimothyMueller-Harder Nope, I can't. I can't even see them in Safari, which supposedly should see emoticons. – daviesgeek Feb 15 '12 at 21:12
Also, I remember a browser plugin or javascript bookmarklet that rendered them correctly, but I haven't been able to find it after a few minutes of Googling. – timothymh Feb 15 '12 at 21:18
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That would do it. Lion offers support for emoji, like the iPad does, but Snow Leopard does not. The thing is, these are unicode characters, rather than images, and they only have visual representation if an installed font supports those characters. This requires a specific support of them on the OS's side, which most mobile devices due to the way they implement localization. I don't know whether it's as simple as installing a certain font or something, but I'd try looking for one if I were you. – timothymh Feb 15 '12 at 21:46
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2 Answers

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If they are using real Unicode emoji, you cannot see them without the Apple Color Emoji font, which only works in 10.7, or possibly by downloading and installing a black/white font that has them, like Symbola or Quivira.

Unicode emoji were only standardized in October of 2010 and I think there are various apps which may not recognize them anyway. Here is Timothy's test using the Symbola font in 10.6

Timothy's test using the Symbola font in 10.6

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Here's a GreaseMonkey script: http://photar.net/emoji/ I haven't tried this myself, so I don't have firsthand experience, but some reviews say that it causes serious lag, so I'd recommend only enabling it when you see a "character not supported" box. To run it in Chrome, you'll need to first install TamperMonkey. The script is designed for Firefox, so it may not work completely, but there's a good chance it will.

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