diff --git a/gramps/plugins/lib/libhtml.py b/gramps/plugins/lib/libhtml.py
index 9690a55fe..c232d1f6b 100644
--- a/gramps/plugins/lib/libhtml.py
+++ b/gramps/plugins/lib/libhtml.py
@@ -202,7 +202,7 @@ class Html(list):
         if title is not None: 
             head += (Html('title', title, inline=True, indent=True))
         if html5:
-            head += Html('meta', charset="utf-8", indent=True)
+            head += Html('meta', charset=encoding, indent=True)
         else:
             meta1 = 'http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=%s"'
             meta2 = 'http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"'
diff --git a/gramps/plugins/webreport/narrativeweb.py b/gramps/plugins/webreport/narrativeweb.py
index 3db65999a..8608b318f 100644
--- a/gramps/plugins/webreport/narrativeweb.py
+++ b/gramps/plugins/webreport/narrativeweb.py
@@ -82,12 +82,13 @@ import time, datetime
 import locale
 import shutil
 import io
+import codecs
 import tarfile
 import tempfile
 if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
     from cStringIO import StringIO
 else:
-    from io import StringIO
+    from io import StringIO, BytesIO, TextIOWrapper, BufferedWriter
 from textwrap import TextWrapper
 from unicodedata import normalize
 from collections import defaultdict
@@ -7828,9 +7829,14 @@ class NavWebReport(Report):
         else:
             self.cur_fname = fname + ext
         if self.archive:
-            string_io = StringIO()
-            of = io.open(fname, "w", encoding = self.encoding,
-                         errors = 'xmlcharrefreplace')
+            if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
+                string_io = StringIO()
+                of = codecs.EncodedFile(string_io, 'utf-8', self.encoding,
+                                        'xmlcharrefreplace')
+            else:
+                string_io = BytesIO()
+                of = TextIOWrapper(string_io, encoding=self.encoding,
+                                   errors='xmlcharrefreplace')
         else:
             string_io = None
             if subdir:
@@ -7838,8 +7844,22 @@ class NavWebReport(Report):
                 if not os.path.isdir(subdir):
                     os.makedirs(subdir)
             fname = os.path.join(self.html_dir, self.cur_fname)
-            of = io.open(fname, "w", encoding = self.encoding,
-                         errors = 'xmlcharrefreplace')
+            if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
+                # In python 2.x, the data written by of.write() is genarally of
+                # type 'str' (i.e. 8-bit strings), except for cases where (at
+                # least) one of the objects being converted by a '%' operator is
+                # unicode (e.g. the "Generated by" line or the _META3 line), in
+                # which case the data being written is of type 'unicode' (See
+                # http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#string-
+                # formatting). The data written to the file is encoded according
+                # to self.encoding
+                of = codecs.EncodedFile(open(fname, 'w'), 'utf-8',
+                                        self.encoding, 'xmlcharrefreplace')
+            else:
+                # In python 3, the data that is written by of.write() is always
+                # of type 'str' (i.e. unicode text).
+                of = open(fname, 'w', encoding=self.encoding,
+                          errors='xmlcharrefreplace')
         return (of, string_io)
 
     def close_file(self, of, string_io):
@@ -7848,6 +7868,8 @@ class NavWebReport(Report):
         """
 
         if self.archive:
+            if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
+                of.flush()
             tarinfo = tarfile.TarInfo(self.cur_fname)
             tarinfo.size = len(string_io.getvalue())
             tarinfo.mtime = time.time()