Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
A little more than a year ago, Russia opened up registration for its top-level IDN: рф. Since then, more than 900,000 domains have been registered, making this the most successful IDN by far. I’ve always been quick to stress that …
ICANN recently approved Malaysia’s Arabic IDN (internationalized domain name), bringing the number of countries or territories with approved IDNs to 29. Here is the full list. As shown here, Malaysia joins a growing club of IDN holders! And here’s …
Kazakhstan has joined a fast-expanding group of countries and regions that now have IDNs (28 and counting). I’ve highlighted Kazakhstan in the map above. The IDN is қаз. While getting approval for an IDN doesn’t guarantee a country will actually do anything …
Here’s a new article I’ve written for UX Magazine on the emergence of internationalized domain names (IDNs). I view IDNs as an inevitable (albeit awkward) evolution of the Internet. And here are the previous two articles I’ve written for UX Magazine: Select Country; …
Paul Sawers of The Next Web has written an in-depth article on the evolution of internationalized domain names (IDNs). It’s a great article for quickly getting up to speed on how non-Latin domains work on the Internet and how they’ve …
If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know I’m a fan of internationalized domain names (IDNs). Over the past year or so, ICANN has approved more than 20 IDNs across a range of countries, scripts and languages. I’ve …
This visual depicts about half of the currently approved internationalized domain names (IDNs), positioned over their respective regions. Notice the wide range of scripts over India and the wide range of Arabic domains. I left off the Latin country code …
Tech pundit John Gruber threw in the towel on his domain ✪df.ws. He writes: What I didn’t foresee was the tremendous amount of software out there that does not properly parse non-ASCII characters in URLs, particularly IDN domain names. Twitter …
In January of this year, ICANN announced that four fast-track IDNs had made it through linguistic approval — effectively clearing the way for commercialization. Oddly missing from that list was China’s IDN. One of the reasons ICANN initiated a fast-track …
So who’s applied for IDNs so far? According to ICANN, 10 applications (representing five languages) were submitted over the first four days. ICANN won’t announce exactly who applied and for what until each application is successful — which pushes us …
It’s now November the 16th in Asia, which means the “Fast Track” has begun. Here’s the process: The Fast Track process is only for ccTLDs and only for those countries with non-Latin official languages. So if you qualify, get your …
It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day when I read these “IDNs are coming” articles. Here’s one I read this morning about ICANN’s meeting in Seoul, happening now, where the powers that be are expected to approve “fast track” IDNs. …
Could it be happening? Finally? After all these years? Internationalized domain names at last becoming a reality around the world — and not just in China? It’s looking that way. For starters, the IETF is in “last call” of IDNAbis …
The European Commission has announced that it will begin supporting domain registration in Greek and Cyrillic characters. This will allow for support of all 23 official EU languages. The EC hasn’t announced when registrations will be possible. I took a …
So with the “father of Internet” and chief Internet evangelist at Google, Vinton Cerf, chairing the latest IDNA working group and ICANN issuing a fast track PDF document, it appears that we’re really truly absolutely going to see IDNs come …