Next Explorer version will support int'l domains
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
The second beta release of Internet Explorer 7 will have support for URLs written in different languages, widely seen as critical for making the Internet more international, according to a Microsoft developer.
IE 7 will use APIs to convert domain names to punycode, wrote Vishu Gupta, an IE developer, in a blog posting Monday. Punycode is an ASCII translation of Unicode domain names, the format allowed by the DNS.
IE 6 does not support punycode, and some Web sites work around it by linking to punycoded URLs, Gupta wrote. In IE 7, the Unicode domain names will be converted to punycode just before the domain name is resolved and sent to the proxy.