IDN domains. Which TLD is default in IE7? Country-specific or .com?

**Avensen** · 07-12-2006, 06:37 PM

Suppose user types an IDN domain without extension in the address bar.

Firefox 1.5 navigates to a domain + country extension (I think it checks Windows' country settings).

Opera 8 opens typed_domain + .com.

What about IE7? Can anyone check how it works in such situation?

**Bramiozo** · 07-13-2006, 10:29 AM

Unless words are assigned to a particular country I don't see how the browser can automatically redirect you to the appropriate .ctld, windows'country settings doesn't change that. They would have to generalize to the largest populations (and thus countries) in terms of characterset, making it quite a restrictive measure.
It's impossible for the browser to directly detect a particular language unless the language has a unique characterset, detecting languages (with a certain successrate that is) requires an algorithm supported by a rather bulky database of language common combinations, processing that will take seconds rather than microseconds..

It would be a whole lot 'friendlier' if the user could choose between .gtld and .ctld.

**Olney** · 07-13-2006, 01:26 PM

That's not the way Firefox works.

If a keyword is typed into Firefox it will go to the first listing for the keyword in Google.
Results while in the US may & will be different from results in Google while searching in let's say Japan.

**Avensen** · 07-13-2006, 02:33 PM

Originally Posted by Olney

That's not the way Firefox works.

If a keyword is typed into Firefox it will go to the first listing for the keyword in Google.
Results while in the US may & will be different from results in Google while searching in let's say Japan.

You're right, I should check it better!

**Named** · 07-15-2006, 12:03 AM

Originally Posted by Avensen

What about IE7? Can anyone check how it works in such situation?

CTRL-Enter sends it to .com.

**wrdekle** · 09-07-2006, 03:33 AM

Originally Posted by Named

CTRL-Enter sends it to .com.

Default extension for CTRL-Enter is .com but user can set that key combination to default to any extension they like. Probably only 2% of users ever will figure that out though (if that many).

As with the IE6 browser, isolated words in the URL line will take you to the MSN search page for that term. Since MSN has to scramble for any search traffic advantage it can get, I presume that IE7 will do nothing different.