A simple primer to IDN top level domains, courtesy of ICANN.
One of the reasons many people are “turned off” by internationalized domain names is that they don’t understand how they work. Admittedly, much of the information about IDNs to date has been described in a technical matter, turning people off even more.
So I was delighted to see a blog post from ICANN’s Tina Dam titled “IDN Usability“. I highly recommend reading it, as is clearly explains IDN ccTLDs and how the typical internet user can use them.
The post shows specific examples of IDN ccTLDs in various browsers and how they are displayed. It also shows you how to update your browser to correctly display the URLs in the case that they show up as their A-label (also explained in the blog post). Now that there are three live IDN ccTLDs on the web, this is useful information for anyone who uses non-Latin scripts in day-to-day communication.
Aaron Krawitz says
Very much appreciate the IDN coverage. Thanks Andrew.
jeff says
Great read for those just entering the shallow waters of IDNs..