First non-Latin domain name goes live, trips out browsers

ICANN decided late last year that URLs would finally be allowed with non-Latin characters, but it wasn't until this week that the first one was set free onto the world wide web. The new hot place to visit is http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/, and while you'll need to know a bit of Arabic to actually pronounce it, you don't have to have any foreign language skills to click the link and see what happens. As of now, the site loads as http://xn--4gbrim.xn----rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ in pretty much every browser we've tried here in the US, but all of the site content seems to populate just fine. Remember that URL gold rush from last century? Round two is officially on.

[The Doctor Posted May 10th 2010 9:21AM]

It does work in IE8. You just have to install the Language in IE to get it working.

[JordanT92 Posted May 10th 2010 9:37AM]

Woo :D just bought http://goógle.com :D

[Rany Posted May 10th 2010 9:57AM]

The site is pronounced:
wezaret el etisalat wa techonologya el malomat
which means the ministry of communications and information technology in Egypt.

[GldRush98 Posted May 10th 2010 10:03AM]

It just rolls off the tongue
http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/

[The Hype Posted May 10th 2010 10:28AM]

Actually This translates to "Egyptian ministry of communication and information technology"

[TRiPgod Posted May 10th 2010 11:05AM]

I'm surprised the url isn't \موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر\\:ptth

[yejun Posted May 10th 2010 11:19AM]

It's non-Latin TLD. Non-latin level 2 domain has been around for a while.

[artifex Posted May 10th 2010 11:30AM]

I noticed an aditional problem with Firefox, in that selecting the URL as text doesn't seem to work easily. I can select the http part, or the nonroman text, but getting them together in one copy is tricky. Also, Firefox doesn't offer the option to "copy link location," etc. when it's selected in its nonroman form.

Anyone filed a bug yet for this?

[ralesk Posted May 10th 2010 1:09PM]

Was particularly fun to see this post from the Android app and receive all kinds of blown-up UTF-8 instead of proper characters.

[Madoxy Posted May 10th 2010 3:15PM]

I'm using Google Chrome & it's viewing the link correctly.

[asbird Posted May 10th 2010 3:41PM]

this site has been up for a while: http://www.ίδρυματεχνολογίαςέρευνας.gr
does it not count?

[jasev01 Posted May 10th 2010 4:06PM]

@asbird
They are really "foreign" if you get what they are saying.

[jasev01 Posted May 10th 2010 4:06PM]

Worked fine in safari

[HektikLyfe Posted May 10th 2010 5:15PM]

I kind of liked being able to decipher content by directory structure. Now I can imagine web filters and blockers are going to have a nightmare of a time catching up to all the new malicious websites.

I'm not looking forward to this. Clueless users will click on gibberish links now more than ever.

whiteh0use can now be وقع.وزارة-الاتصالا or whatever.

[andalitefriends Posted May 11th 2010 9:30PM]

That's great. Safari 4.0.5 on on Mac OS X 10.6.3 is also able to render the address correctly. Firefox 3.6.3 and Chrome 5.0.375.29 beta are not up to the task.