Mornin' Steven,
IntelliWebSearch is a compiled AutoHotkey (www.autohotkey.com) script. The
version of AutoHotKey I wrote IntelliWebSearch in does not fully support
multi-byte languages (I don't think things have improved - it didn't seem to
be high up on the developer's priorities), so it took a lot of fighting to
get IntelliWebSearch to work with these languages at all. The job was made a
little more difficult by the fact that I don't understand any multi-byte
languages and had to rely on feedback from two kind volunteer beta-testers.

> Firstly, on sites such as Google and Wikipedia, where the URL ends
> with the search string, the searches work fine with Japanese, but on
> J-E dictionaries where the URL continues after the search string
> (for example www.alc.co.jp), the Japanese gets scrambled (though
> these sites are fine with English). I'm not an expert on encoding,
> but this seems to be an issue with the escape sequence, because if I
> include a space after the Japanese when I copy it into the search
> window, the Japanese arrives at the dictionary intact (but the
> search itself fails because of this space).

IntelliWebSearch 2.0.1 adds a space (%20) after the search terms because it
is sometimes required before the advanced search options in some search
engines. Obviously in a lot of cases the space is superfluous, but up to now
this has not been a problem. It would seem from your message however that it
causes problems in Japanese.
In v. 2.0.2, I have changed the script so that the space is no longer added
if the "Finish string":
1) is empty (so there cannot be any "advanced search" options)
2) starts with a "&" (options are sent in a way that does not need spaces)
3) starts with a "%" (first letter of the string is a "special" character so
it is unlikely to be an "advanced search" option, but could well be a UTF or
Win1252 encoded multi-byte language string).

I'm sending you the URL to download the new version in a separate message. I
would appreciate it if you could test it and let me know if it solves your
problem.

I would also be pleased to hear from any other volunteers who would like to
test the new version before it is officially released. My tests so far
suggest that it still works correctly with *non*-multi-byte languages, and
the search engines actually seem to respond a bit faster, probably because
they don't have to deal with the extra space when it is not needed.

> The other problem is with the search settings. I can input the
> Japanese necessary to limit google's search to Japanese glossaries,
> but when I hit 'save and close' and then reopen it, the Japanese has
> become scrambled, and is similarly scrambled in Google when I do a
> search.

This "scrambling" may not be important if the problem was the space. Let me
know if this is solved as a knock-on effect of the space fix.

Cheers
Mike