How do IDNs work in a browser?
When a compliant browser receives input for an IDN, it converts the native language IDN into Punycode. In other words, the native language IDN is converted into an ASCII string (prefixed with xn--) that can then be looked up at the TLD nameserver to determine the location of the website. The xn-- prefix was accepted as the IDNA standard by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) on February 14, 2003. Browsers which support this functionality include Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.4, Opera 7 and Firefox 1.0. It is anticipated that all later versions of these browsers will also support IDNs.
