Suggested Extension to Fix

Suggested Extension to Fix

Posted Feb 22, 2005 17:08 UTC (Tue) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054)
Parent article: New IDN Homograph Spoofing Response: IDN Will Not Be Disabled (MozillaZine)

Having skimmed the Punycode spec. (RFC 3942), I can see that the fix is moderately effective, at least for URLs already in ASCII. It's also a pain for someone reading, say, Hindi who wants to actually read the URL.

As an addition to the temporary fix, how about adding a button next to the URL display which, when pressed, will convert the URL to Unicode so it can actually be read? That sounds relatively doable to one who hasn't checked the source. :-) (By `URL display', I mean the URL-entry bar at the top, where one can see the URL currently visited, and may type in a new URL.)

In addition, it's desirable, and probably more important, to show the URL about to be clicked on, before the click. It's tougher, because a button won't work while hovering. Maybe, when hovering, convert the info line at the bottom into two lines, showing both the Punycode and the readable text?

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