I'm trying to open a link from flash to a google search with simplified Chinese in it. I can trace and display the link in the compiled swf, but if I try to open the link I get http://www.google.ca/search?ie=UTF-8&q=????

The link looks like this:http://www.google.ca/search?ie=UTF-8&q=维基解密

navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.google.ca/search?ie=UTF-8&q=维基解密"), "_blank");

Interesting.

Is the user generating the search term?

You should really be testing on a system where the system code page is actually Chinese.

You'll likely need to do something like this, but i really have no idea. You may need to url encode the entire thing after encoding the var to utf-8. This might be a cross-browser cluster fuck.

navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.google.ca/search?ie=UTF-8&q=+"encodeURIComponent(维基解密)), "_blank");

The most bullet proof solution is javascript and the externalInterface.

Thanks persist. The encodeURIComponent worked - I'll see if I can switch it to javascript.