Displaying International Domain Names in the browser's address bar

• In IE (>7): Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> International -> Always show encoded addresses -> Uncheck
  A typical "All or nothing" Microsoft solution to a problem that demands a smart approach. Well done Redmond!
• In Firefox (from Marc Blanchet's post): about:config and filter using keyword "IDN". There you have two possibilities:
  
  1. Create a "network.IDN.whitelist.com" boolean key and set it to true => will display all the .com IDNs using their Unicode characters, a.k.a. "the Microsoft way"
  2. Create a new network.IDN.whitelist boolean entry for your full domain (eg: "network.IDN.whitelist.xn--abc.com") and set it to true.

Of course, none of this is really satisfying, as domains that do not present any risk of homograph attack (eg: sequence of glyphs that are not used in any language, or one glyph characters that cannot be mistaken for any other), are still not displayed as Unicode by default in those browsers, which really sucks.

The way to address this issue would be for unicode.org to maintain a list of lookalike characters (i.e. characters considered as dangerous to use in an IDN because they can easily be mistaken for another character). The browser could then use this list (along with a list of all the valid Unicode characters at the time the list was created, as you want to take provision against new spoofable Unicode characters) to sort this issue.

Of course, Unicode is likely to have cold feet about producing such a list, as they could end up being sued if they miss a lookalike and end up being sued as a result, but really, as the authority, it should be part of their role...