[bd]

It doesn't work at all for me in Firefox 3 on Windows. I get the same response after clicking on all links (feed reader, HN frontpage, this page):

  Page Load Error
  Address Not Found
  Firefox can't find the server at www.➡.ws.

This is the same trouble as with Unicode snowman domain.

In one discussion here on HN I figured out it's probably because of some security measure to prevent phishing. There are some Unicode characters that look like normal ASCII letters (for example in Cyrillic alphabet), so if Unicode worked in urls, you could create malicious sites that would look like real ones:

http://EXAMPLE-ВANK.COM (fake)

http://EXAMPLE-BANK.COM (real)

[thorax]

What version/build of Firefox do you have? Firefox/3.0.6?

Also, check your about:config and filter by IDN, you should see a lot of settings there. Any of them not set to default?

Especially check this one: network.enableIDN

by default it is set to True.

What other Firefox addons do you have that might be parsing URLs before you visit them? Any?

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

[bd]

Firefox 3.0.6

  network.enableIDN;false (user set)

Addons that can modify urls:

  NoScript, AdBlock Plus

I guess it's probably NoScript that disabled IDN (internationalized domain names). I don't remember doing it manually.