30 October

Browsers convert the Chinese, Korean or other non-Latin characters in a domain name into a string of plain letters and digits starting with xn-- before looking up the site's address. When the name matches a pattern that Chrome or Firefox treats as a possible lookalike, such as Latin letters mixed with Cyrillic or Greek, the address bar shows that code instead (Chrome's rules do allow Latin letters mixed with Chinese, Japanese or Korean). At its meeting in Seoul on 30 October 2009, ICANN (the body that oversees the world's domain names) approved a fast-track process for countries and territories to apply for the last part of a web address, where .tw or .kr sits, in their own script. In the list of top-level domains kept by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), .中国 and .中國 were delegated on 8 July 2010, .香港 on 12 July, .台灣 on 14 July and .ไทย on 17 August, with .한국 and .新加坡 following on 6 February 2011. Readers can open the sites they use often from a bookmark or by typing the address, and because Chrome's documentation says password managers fill in a password only when the domain matches exactly, a saved password that fails to appear is a cue to check the address (both suggestions are our inference, and the sources do not assess how well they work).