www. © .com

Hey Motsa Lighten up!

And the incorrect comments are still wrong. They spoke without doing research and they are wrong.

With things like this, IDN's, only time will tell if they are to work or not, and time is proving that they will be successful.

My point was that the comments were absolutely correct when they were written and coming back to declare them invalid 2 years later is just plain silly.

Another thing that is silly (to the point of suicidally so) is ... to base long-range plans on non-standard proprietary, version-dependent hacks. What has happened in the last two years? The plugins for earlier versions of Windows won't work. More and more people are using REAL internet browsers (notably Firefox) and REAL operating systems (well, Unix and clones thereof. For real programmers, it is needless to say that the Windows-version-specific hacks won't work at all for those users. Microsoft has just had to put out a new version of the Infernal Exploder that DELIBERATELY breaks plugins (because of losing yet ANOTHER intellectual-property-theft-and-abuse case.) And Any-Time-Now Microsoft is threatening to come out with a new release of Windows (Vista) that basically breaks EVERYTHING, from file systems to file formats to programming interfaces to user interfaces.

Is this kind of change likely to stop? Hardly. Does whoever hacked together that Windows-98/IE version four-point-whatever have the wherewithall to provide equivalent hacks for all of today's environments, and the stamina to handle tomorrow's?

And ... in a world where people are (justifiably) increasingly suspicious of downloads that affect browser operation -- if such a hack were provided, who WOULDN'T load it for love nor money? I certainly wouldn't!

These are, understandably, issues that people may not have faced unless they've been programmers or content-creators for a long time. But, once you've seen your own formerly-valuable work lying dead and worthless under the new generation of hardware or software -- you learn to go with the standard, or you remain forevermore irrelevant. If you have ANY hope of still being here in another two years, then ... you'd better start figuring out how to conform to the standards that will shape the future (of any project that HAS one!), and avoid the putrifying legacy of shifting transient proprietary conventions.

erri2000 said:

callimachus said:

Actually it is. Given the increasing numbers of web sites that have embedded malicious code, plus the spammers and mirrors and affiliates then not having page code to look at becomes a definite issue.

Additionally, such domain names will, at least in the short term, impede efforts to make the web useable regardless of platform or browser.

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Wrong!

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Actually I was perfectly correct at the time of the original post. As regards viewing the source code nothing has changed; the ability to view a page's code remains a big benefit to users and developers alike and that is unlikely to change. What has changed is that the code is now perfectly viewable as normal in Firefox and Opera for such domains.

As for the second point it was correct - in the short term those domains did create problems. They are no longer a significant issue in WIndows with a decent browser (Opera uses them directly and Firefox automatically converts the © to xn--gba) though IE still isn't fond of them without assistance. They remain a problem for specialized browsers such as those used by the blind and text browsers such as lynx. Of course the problem remains with assorted MUAs, MTAs etc that don't know what to do with them.

The biggest annoyance with them now remains the fact that such characters don't normally appear on a standard keyboard and a user has to look up the proper character codes to input them. Various problems with fonts/character sets may exists across various operating systems as well. Using IDN's in non-Latin character sets (such as traditional Chinese) has hurdles of it's own to overcome.

While they work fine in a subset of the Windows world (and possible the Apple as well), they are a long way still from being widely handled as smoothly as a normal domain name would be.

Let me start be saying you are all correct and, motsa, I think you are silly.

When I first bought these names, www.©.com and www.®.com, everybody at my University, where I worked, and in related fields told me that I was making a mistake, a $70.00 mistake. I was told that it was a scam.

After some research I found out that people where reacting to IDN domains the same way that they did when introduced to the Internet in the 80's. If they did not understand the process it was not possible, alot of "The world is round, you will fall of the edge" aurguments.

The pure and simple fact, for me, is everything on the Internet is a long term deal. If you are going to set up something for the now and not think about the future you are going to end up chasing your tail.

And in 20 years people are not going to be asking how to type symbols into their URL bar, they will probably go to a search engine and click a link from the results, just like today.

I have several domains that are not in the norm.

Example http://classified.ad
This is a classified ad site, real straight forward, free classifieds with premium services. This domain will never be at the top of dmoz for classifieds, why? I have no idea, I just don't question it, but I do know that in 10 years if I keep developing then I will be the Internets classifieds or at least in the running and then I can advertise anything I want on it.

Example http://snap.bz
This is a classified/community site for Belize, like a craigslist on steriods, free classifieds with premium services.

Example http://stand-up.info
This is a directory for stand-up comedy related information. I will never get it into DMOZ. I will submit it once a year and it won't get pick up. Am I worried? No, becuase I know that comedians talk about the site when they are on the road, so word will get arround eventually.

The only way I am going to get my domains in a search engine is to pay for them, so I do and people do come. If I continue this process I will have a very large community in just a few years. Slow and steady. And this is not a secret community, so people will probably talk about it, then one day my domains will be common place as fixtures of the Internet. If not, it was a fun ride and I learned alot, right?

So guys thanks for listening to my rant.

FYI IDN domains display properly on an Apple out of the box, no special configuration needed. Apple has a pretty big community.

JV
Chief
Errichetti.Com

Just keeping you all filled in on the IDN situation. You all here at DMOZ could not have been more wrong and everything you stated was used to mislead the market. Let the black-out on the "Non-people" continue, correct?

PS this forum is used to collect ideas for website that the moderators are building. DMOZ is full of hacks (that is term used by writers to describe people that have no originality).

PS I am not waiting on a link to be put in the system.

Those domain names might look rather cool in the Unicode form, but I'm not sure many people are going to know how to enter the appropriate characters on their computer, or be able to convert them to the somewhat less pretty xn-- form (which, incidentally, is what my browser converts the Unicode too in the URL bar).

And as far as the ODP is concerned, it looks like both xn--gba.com and xn--lba.com are far from listable in their current state.

which, incidentally, is what my browser converts the Unicode too in the URL bar

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Hey, mine just gives a "cannot find server" error.

hacks (that is term used by writers to describe people that have no originality).

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I think you need a new dictionary.