IE8 Beta2 and IDNs

[nikel]

Works just as Chrome.

If you download IE in your own language the IDNs show as Unicode without additional adjustments, and if you want to add other IDNs you have to add the corresponding languages first.

With IE it's even better because of the pop-ups that explain what is happening and what you have to do, when you try to access an IDN.

Typing a keyword in the address bar without a domain extension you get redirected to MSN Search instead of Google Search.

Now I'm certainly sure that Mozilla will have to adopt at least SOME approach to IDNs otherwise they'd get left in the dust of IE and Chrome.

Hint to the Mozilla devs: Just copy paste the IDN code from Chrome if you don't feel like coding - they even encourage you to do it. There's no shame in effectiveness


Some video from some early version of IE8 showing IDN support (Beta1 I think)

http://technorati.com/videos/youtube...%3DV49_g9I8LoY

Note: in the latest beta2 you don't get the big popup but some smaller version of it, much less annoying and screen-estate hungry.

Anyway with these posts I wanted to encourage everyone to try the browsers themselfs. I mean some of you have probably invested some substantial amount of money in this "whole IDN thing" - wouldn't you be interested where things are heading?

Btw since I don't want to install more shite than I already have on my PC I used VMWare Workstation + WinFLP (a very light version of WinXP) to install IE8.

[nikel]

Holy shit I made it sound as if everything's good with IE8.

Far from the truth. I wasn't able to install the Russian version of IE8 despite having everything in place, adjusted for Russian.

You can't just install IE8 in Russian, even if your name is Vladimir Putin.

At the end my virtual windows was adjusted for Russian but I ended up installing the regular English version because the Russian would insist that my windows isn't adjusted for Russian, still the Russian IDNs worked right away (Unicode) without additional work.

[nikel]

Here's the official blog post announcing the support of 25 languages plus some details.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/200...languages.aspx

With the release of these additional languages, the IE8 IEAK can now build an additional 20 language packages. Download the IEAK and learn more about how to customize IE8 here.

We're excited to enable more users to download IE8 Beta 2 and use it in their native languages! You're feedback is always welcome, so please leave us a comment on this post.