International Keywords a.k.a. Navicode

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Guest

I have had a query from a client regarding International Keywords, at first I
did not know what was being referred to until I started some research on the
internet. I know now the principle behind the term but more than that seems
to be difficult to find. I have had a look on www.ikeyword.com where the
explain the concept well and give you the possibility of registering a
keyword, but that's it. I have tried what they say with IE6 but it does not
work. Does anybody out there know a bit more about this technology,
particularly to the future of it? (When) Will IE support this? I ask because
the example on the website uses IE.
 
The latest version of the Google toolbar has support for a similar concept.
You can enter a web site name such as 'msn' or 'iecustomizer' in the address
bar and the IE browser will navigate to the URL that most closely matches
that keyword (whether a .com, .edu, .mil or whatever). It does this by
replacing the standard URLSearchHook for Internet Explorer. You will find a
CLSID value under the registry key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\URLSearchHooks

The default value for IE is {CFBFAE00-17A6-11D0-99CB-00C04FD64497} which
points to the Microsoft Search Hook (look up the CLSID under the HKCR key)
with an InProcess server of broweui.dll

Looking more at the ikeyword site there is a technical overview at
http://www.ikeyword.com/about/technical.html which seems to indicate that
the technology just uses some local name resolution to translate the keyword
to a verified IP address. This could be perhaps achieved with the HOSTS file
on a PC. Instead of resolving a friendly address to the localhost to block a
site, there could be an entry in the HOSTS file to resolve a keyword to a
verified IP address. ( I just tried this on my machine... it didn't work)

There are also other entries in the registry to resolve fiendly names to
full site addresses. It used to be in earlier versions of IE that you ALWAYS
had to type in http://www. before the site address, and always .com, .mil ,
..edu etc.

Compuserve used to use a keyword system and I think the AOL browser (which I
think is just the MS Browser control in a proprietry wrapper) uses them. You
could make your own if you wanted to using the MS Browser Control and using
a lookup table to resolve the keyword to an IP address in the BeforeNavigate
event.

You may also like to research SearchURL's - this is where you enter a search
keyword followed by a search phrase in the Address bar and the search phrase
is passed to the search engine assigned to the keyword. The Google toolbar
replaces the MS URLSearchHook with its own version to resolve web site names
into web addresses.
 
Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply. I have done a bit further research on this and founf
some further info on the ICANN website. Although they seem to refer to it
under the banner of Internationalized Domain Names, or IDN. It seems to some
sort of merging protocol that is being tested more in the Far East/Asia. It
looks like it is "wait and see" situation at the moment.
 
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