For a long time it has been possible to use chars such as æøåüöé etc. in .com and .net domains. However it is only possible to browse to these domains if you either own a mozilla browser, or have downloaded this IDNplugin to Internet Explorer.
Now, one whom uses Mozilla will get an all-around nice experience of browsing these domains since he will not notice any “Install this plugin” dialogs etc.
I myself was rather supprised to find out that mozilla supported this.
E-mail is another problem with IDN domains.
Webmails such as hotmail and a large amount of other webmails does not support sending to these types of domains, thereby if your primary domain is an IDN domain you are not likely to be getting a whole lot of email (and no spam?).
You can however send e-mail to IDN domains if you are the owner of Outlook Express or Outlook (not Outlook 2003).
Again the use of IDN domains in Microsoft programs is 100% dependent on the IDNplugin, Microsoft did show some interest in supporting these domains by default at some point, but then backed out – leaving the whole IDN concept dead in the water. Strangely enough Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird does not support the use of IDN domains in emails, yet.
Another problem is internationalization, since an English keyboard does not come with æøå on them they will find it hard to visit your site or send you email. It’s not very polite to require them to know the ALTGR + [0-9] combination for the chars.
I can understand why someone would want an IDN domain to be their secondary domain, since it’s a nice feature to both own rene.com and rené.com – but only owning rené.com would be silly, since e-mail support is rather non-existent with IDN domains.
Its popularity is largely dependant on e-mail, therefore I think Microsoft should get out of the starting holes and put some effort into supporting these new domains. So you don’t have to download some silly plug-in to use them as normal domains.
The whole concept seems to be somewhat broken :)
[ end rant]
Opera and Safari support IDN domains out of the box as well.
What do you guys think about the igetnet plugins that allow a user to surf to a website just by typing in keywords to a browser with the plugin?
That is also possible in Mozilla Firebird (maybe others). It’s sure a nice thing, but I don’t use it.
I like keywords in combination with safari.
it’s called Sodugi
Actually, you can send email to idn-domains; however, if your mailclient does not support it, you have to use the encoded domain name as domainpart (e.g. for “rené.com” you have to use “xn--ren-dma.com” – looks silly).
But you’re right, the whole concept is broken. :-(
Tom:
I came across your blog and wanted to introduce myself. I am the technical director for the i-Nav plug-in here at Verisign.
I wanted to update you that the i-Nav plug-in to Outlook now supports Outlook 2003. In addition we have an option in our IE plug-in which allows you to send and receive email sent from Hotmail.
We are working hard with application developers to add support for IDNs natively into their application and you can see an updated list at: http://www.verisign.com/nds/naming/idn/applications.html
Hope this helps.
Gary.
It is not important that how many kind of browser support IDN!!
The most important thing is The microsoft’s internet explorer supports the IDN in natively.
Whole rest world use non-english are ready to use IDN when the internet explorer starts supporting IDN.
Only you verisign have to work on it is the answer.
Chris:
You are absolutely correct however there is actually not alot that we can do to move a elephant like MSFT. Keep in mind that IDNs have now been lauched in over 20 countries (including China and Taiwan) and the only way for this to happen is if MSFT hears this from the end user community.
As you may know keyword providers such as 3271, Baidu, etc all require plug-ins in much the same way as IDNs do with i-Nav. Keyword products in China are extremely successful and in that case MSFT does not nor will they ever support a keyword product as a navigation aid.
So we are hoping that until MSFT does support IDNs users find i-Nav of value in much the same way as the keyword providers of plug-ins are being used.
Thank you for your comments.
Gary.
Hi guys
Just a quick update to this blog; Microsoft are bringing out the beta version of IE7 sometime this summer. This browser will have full IDN support, and if it finally takes then I would guess that IDN will be ‘mainstream’ within 3 years…
Regards