MisterWebNet

Get ready to see some strange gobbledegook web addresses. At least if you don't speak Arabic. Web addresses will now be available in Arabic in what is being heralded as a major achievement in opening up the web to non-English/Latin scripts.

Egypt announced that it had begun registering domain names under the .misr domain. 'Misr' is the Arabic name for Egypt written right to left in Arabic script. Previously, Egypt had been using the .eg domain. Other countries are set to follow suit. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will be using new codes for '.al-saudiah' and '.emarat'.

To see the Arabic names and script, a users browser must have the correct font, otherwise a jumble of strange symbols appears. The move will be welcomed by non-English speakers. Over half of web suers do not use a Latin script as their primary language.

"The geographic expansion of the Internet and the corresponding increase of use by various linguistic groups or communities resulted in the need for domain names also to consist of characters from all scripts used in the world today" said ICANN's Tina Dam. "Content written in various languages has been around for a long time. The fact is that for example websites where the content is all in Hindi should also have a web-address in Hindi. The matching addresses are now here."

Icann said on its blog that it does expect some teething problems but easy software updates for browsers to recognise foreign scripts should make the process easier for end-users.