A way to manipulate UTF-8 strings in jQuery.

jQuery.UTF-8.js

;(function($, undefined) {
    $.extend({
        toUTF8     : function(text) {
            text = text.replace(/\r\n/g,"\n");

            var output = [];

            for (var n = 0 ; n < text.length ; n++) {
                var c = text.charCodeAt(n);

                if (c < 128) {
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode(c));
                } else if ((c > 127) && (c < 2048)) {
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode((c >> 6) | 192));
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode((c & 63) | 128));
                } else {
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode((c >> 12) | 224));
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode(((c >> 6) & 63) | 128));
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode((c & 63) | 128));
                }
            }

            return output.join('');
        },
        fromUTF8   : function(text) {
            var output = [],
                i = c = c1 = c2 = 0;

            while (i < text.length) {
                c = text.charCodeAt(i);

                if (c < 128) {
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode(c));
                    i++;
                } else if ((c > 191) && (c < 224)) {
                    c2 = text.charCodeAt(i + 1);
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode(((c & 31) << 6) | (c2 & 63)));
                    i += 2;
                } else {
                    c2 = text.charCodeAt(i + 1);
                    c3 = text.charCodeAt(i + 2);
                    output.push(String.fromCharCode(((c & 15) << 12) | ((c2 & 63) << 6) | (c3 & 63)));
                    i += 3;
                }
            }

            return output.join('');
        }
    });
})(jQuery);