title: Is it safe to assume users can see unicode characters U+2716 and U+2714 in CSS content?
body: <p>I'm wanting to use the characters ✖ (U+2716) and ✔ (U+2714) in my CSS for form validation purposes. Basically, if a field is valid/invalid, I use the after pseudo class to insert the corresponding symbol after the field.</p>
  
  <p>For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>.field:after {
    content: "\2716";
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is working great on my Mac, but when I switch to my Windows XP VMWare instance, I don't get the characters, no matter what font I choose (even Arial).</p>
  
  <p>My suspicion is that perhaps my Windows VM isn't configured properly, but that causes me to be weary of using these characters at all.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know if there are "safe" characters or ranges in unicode that you can reliably assume will be viewable by most people?</p>
  
  <p><strong>UDPATE:</strong></p>
  
  <p>Here is a list of unicode characters I was hoping to possibly be able to use as icons. Specifically the dingbats section.
  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters#Dingbats">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters#Dingbats</a></p>
  
  <p>If you don't see these characters on your machine, definitely let me know in the comments.</p>