Should there be discussion about the impact of the possible ( very likely ) change to allowing domain names in languages other than english? This news item seems to indicate that domain names in languages which require UTF8 for display will happen. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=14051&tag=nl.e539

Do the macro statements hostname, dirname, basename, and urlencode need any upgrade to handle URLs if the domain name requires UTF8?

Another item mentioned in the news item is the change from IPv4 to IPv6. Will that all be handled by the Gecko engine?

ipv6 is resolved by the operating system, so k-meleon or other browser doesn't need any additional support for it

vista and above already come with ipv6 protocol installed, xp has support for ipv6 but needs to be added manually through network connections..(right click any local network) that's usually reserved for your network interface card>install new protocol and select ipv6 which will be installed universally for all connections.. not just the one selected. i think xp sp3 installs the ipv6 protocol automatically.

more there: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/ipv6/ipv6faq.mspx

there's no support for ipv6 in 9x systems but an australian company called trumpet provides a commercial winsock update

the only problem that will face browsers with ipv6 is you can't enter an ipv6 in the urlbar the usual way and expect the browser to resolve it like with ipv4.

for example i know the dns for bbc news: 212.58.226.77, i can just type it in the urlbar and it will automatically send me to the correct website.. this cannot be done the normal way in ipv6, but will require enclosing the ipv6 # in square brackets, using double dots instead of one and adding 2 double dots before the last numerical. e.g: if bbc news has an ipv6 address like 212.58.226.77.113 then when i enter it in the urlbar, i must enter it like that:
[212:58:226:77::113]
this tells the operating system that this address is ipv6 and it has to be resolved accordingly.

there are many ipv6 sites now and you might have encountered one of them and they were interpreted properly but to make sure, test there:
http://www.ipv6.org/v6-www.html

as for top-level domains using utf8 and unicode characters.. i'm not sure but it might indeed require an update within the browser.

edit: personally, i don;t think the unicode domain names will catch on and even if companies or governments opt for them; they will still keep/use regular latin-based domains because latin characters are universal across all computers and operating systems and if they choose using only non-latin domain names; they will be restricting their websites to a small audience(except maybe for china) and anyone establishing a website wants their pages to viewed by everyone.. so maybe it's good to have support for it in the browser but i don't think it will be that essential.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2009 08:53AM by disrupted.