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Unicode Snowman for You
- gcb 16y agohttp://☃.net/ http://☃.net/
- l0nwlf 16y agoOne of my friend had a similar domain but he got it refunded because it didn't worked in all browsers etc and would not in future either according to him because of ICANN's specs which go against symbols in domain names.
- alanh 16y ago> go against symbols in domain names Can you clarify which symbol it was? The only related problem I know is that homoglyphs in domain names are problematic due to their potential abuse for phishing. So for example a smallcaps letter O or C that looks like a lowercase o or c would be problematic. Edit in response: The Apple symbol (U+F8FF) is not cross-platform. It’s explicitly defined as a code point that a system (OS X in this case) can define for its own “private use.” Given this, it’s not surprising that it would go against ICANN policy and cause problems in various browsers.
- tdsrtso 16y agohttps://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Miscellaneous_symbols_(Unicode_block) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Miscellaneous...
- jtagen 16y agoI'm not clear how how the snowman translates to xn--n3h...?
- wizardishungry 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name
- Sidnicious 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
- CWIZO 16y agoI only see a black bordered box. I'm on WinXP and latest dev channel chrome. Am I missing something?
- ugh 16y agohttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/sonwman.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/sonwman.png (Screenshot for all those who can’t see it.)
- tomerico 16y agoFunny it looks different on my computer: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2601554/snowman.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2601554/snowman.png
- ugh 16y agoAwww, yours looks much nicer. The page doesn’t specify a font so I guess it’s just using the default font of the browser (or, failing that, any font that contains the Unicode character; I would be surprised if many do). My default font is Helvetica Neue. – edit: I did some digging around. There are a few fonts on my computer which contain a snowman. My browser uses (for whatever reason) Hiragino which is a family of Japanese fonts that comes standard with every Mac. Your nice snowman is the one in Arial Unicode. Here are all the snowmen on my system: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/snowmen.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/snowmen.png
- 16y ago
- steveklabnik 16y agohttp://railssnowman.info http://railssnowman.info , for those of you who haven't seen it. I believe it ended up being a ✓ in the final build, though.
- bradleyland 16y agoLooks like it was originally committed as a snowman, changed, then committed again, then finally removed. Quite the flurry of activity over a tiny character that sits in the background quietly increasing the consistency of browser behavior and saving the world from cross-encoded text.
- bodhi 16y agoIt was quite a good case-study in bike-shedding. For those new to the term, it's effectively "The intensity of discussion is inversely proportional to the complexity of the problem". http://ftp.sunet.se/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html http://ftp.sunet.se/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_Law_of_Triviality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_Law_of_Triviality
- steveklabnik 16y agoI don't know if I'd entirely call it bike-shedding; if they left it as a snowman, people would start to make comments like "Oh those unprofessional Rubyists, putting silly snowmans willy-nilly into code!" Then again, they might not. But a check seems more 'professional.'
- bodhi 16y agoI agree with you on the end result, but I remember following the comments and discussion on GitHub when the changes were being made. It sure seemed like a big discussion over not much across several commits, and more thank 50 comments on GitHub alone.
- 16y ago
- arohner 16y agoSo why does Unicode Snowman exist? What language uses it?
- m_myers 16y agoIt's in the Symbols & Dingbats subrange, along with the comet (☄), the cloud (☁), the umbrella (☂), the hot springs (♨), all the card suits, all the chess pieces (both white and black), a few musical notes, and various and sundry others. Open Character Map in Arial Unicode font and you can see for yourself. Not all Unicode symbols are meant for languages.
- alanh 16y agoI love Unicode (my license plate? 0x2764 ❤) and that these symbols exist, but get upset that they still don’t see a reason to add a padlock (or two, one open and one closed) or play/pause/ffwd/rev symbols.
- dkarl 16y agoI don't know, but it would sure make it easier to add a bare-bones media player widget or a weather report widget to a spartan desktop interface such as xmonad. Plus your widgets would be automatically restyled to be aesthetically consistent with the rest of the interface!
- Zaak 16y agoI'm holding out for Mr Potato Head combining characters.
- ugh 16y agoI have nothing but sympathy for the Unicode Consortium which finds itself in a difficult situation. The main purpose of Unicode is to contain all characters of all the world’s writing systems, not to be a directory of the world’s symbols. Yet there clearly are some symbols which absolutely have to be part of Unicode. Punctuation, for one. Where to draw the line? That’s not easy.
- 16y ago
- Skroob 16y agoWhy is it wearing a fez?
- Groxx 16y agoBecause it can.
- brian6 16y agoHow to monetize this? In general, how to monetize being funny/entertaining (on the web)?
- languagehacker 16y agoThis claims to be a mirror, but it's sourcing the font file from the original website. That means if unicodesnowmanforyou.com goes down, so does the mirror. Not a mirror.
- treitnauer 16y agoThe sad story of the unicode snowman: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035926 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035926
- w1ntermute 16y agoDoes anyone know how to get the URL to be displayed as http://☃.net http://☃.net rather than http://xn--n3h.net http://xn--n3h.net in Firefox?
- johnny22 16y agoit's displayed like that on purpose, so folks don't fake banking site or other important domains with unicode characters that are similiar to the standard latin characters but aren't actually them. look in about:config for "network.IDN.whitelist.tld" and put .ws in there
- w1ntermute 16y agoAh didn't think about that. I guess I should leave it as it is after all ;/ But won't this have to be enabled in other countries (like China), where they actually want to see the Unicode characters? Isn't that going to increase their risks of being phished?
- thristian 16y agoDifferent top-level domains have different rules about what characters they'll allow in domain names. If a registrar has policies that prevent homograph registration, Firefox (and other browser vendors) will add them to the default whitelist. If the .cn registrar has a policy that says "only ASCII and CJK characters will be allowed in domain names", then it's pretty unlikely that a homoglyph attack will work, and browsers will show the properly-decoded string as the domain name. (and sure enough, my copy of Firefox sets "network.IDN.whitelist.cn" to true)
- vinhboy 16y agohttp://www.gооgle.com http://www.gооgle.com <-- attention to details...