WHAT ARE IDNs?

IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) are foreign language (not English) domain names that contain non-ASCII (A-Z, 0-9) characters. At the moment the IDN is followed by either a Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD), such as .com, .net, .org. Or else as a Country Coded Top Level Domain (ccTLD), such as .cn, .jp, .es, .de.
Work is currently being done in implementing full IDNs (IDN.IDN), so that the extensions are also in the foreign language, although work on this is likely to be a while away at the moment. With preliminary testing only starting at the end of 2007.

Some examples of IDNs: http://автомашина.com, http://ciudad-de-méxico.org, http://职业生涯.com

 

TO VIEW IDNs YOU MUST HAVE AN IDN COMPATABILE BROWSER

IDNs require a IDN compatible web browser to be able to resolve IDN domains properly. Any browser made in the last couple of years should be fine (Firefox, Opera, IE7, Safari, etc), the main problem browser is Internet Explorer 6, which not only is full of security holes, terrible for CSS and non-compliant to web standards, but also will not resolve IDNs properly. If you are using Internet explorer 6 we strongly advise that you upgrade to any of the below:

Opera

I.Explorer 7

Firefox

Safari (beta)