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I happened to stumble upon a website and the URL had a red blob in it. Seriously, I've never seen something like this. What's up with that?!

http://blacklistdeclassified.net/2015/10/30/%F0%9F%94%B4-script-35-arioch-cain/

NB One needs to actually navigate to the page to get to see it. The below is a screenshot on my system (WinX, FF). The red thing isn't PhotoShopped. It's actually red!

enter image description here

Konrad Viltersten
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  • It's dependent on fonts and rendering engines. On windows 7 and arch linux they render in black and white. – the8472 Jan 30 '16 at 13:33
  • @the8472 So you're saying that you're not seeing the same thing in the title as I just pasted a screenshot? (Of course the screenshot has the color but I'm referring to the actual text at the top.) That's dreadful. It means that the colors and appearance are vastly platform-dependent. Not okay... – Konrad Viltersten Jan 30 '16 at 13:55
  • win7: http://i.imgur.com/gODh25T.png arch: http://i.imgur.com/8s7bltK.png I bet it also looks different on mobile systems. – the8472 Jan 30 '16 at 14:15
  • I can vote for migration, and have done so, but it requires a consensus vote from multiple users. A mod can do it immediately if the OP requests a migration and the grounds are reasonable. Thanks! – tripleee Jan 30 '16 at 14:41

1 Answers1

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It's a unicode character, , also known as the "Large Red Circle". UTF-8 F0 9F 94 B4. See this page for more representations and information. It seems from this question that it isn't actually part of the URL, but rather that Firefox, and possibly other browsers, decode it, mostly for use of non-English languages that require the use of Unicode. There is some work going on to support Unicode in more locations, but it hasn't been completely accomplished.

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PearsonArtPhoto
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  • But... But... I'm turning 40 next week, been doing computer stuff for 25-30. And I've never, ever, ever seen that! Special weird characters - yes. But this one is actually of **different color**! How does that render?! What if we print it out? Or show it on a monochromatic screen... Is it only me what finds it weird? What the duck?! (Typo intended.) What's the purpose? Are there others? – Konrad Viltersten Jan 30 '16 at 01:33
  • It's fairly new that it's allowed, but yes, it's pretty cool. I strongly suspect there are other unicode characters that would work the same. – PearsonArtPhoto Jan 30 '16 at 01:35
  • I'm both amazed and unhappy. The former because it's pretty cool and hacky. The latter because nobody's told me... Also unhappy because now, I can imagine every other website will try to stick out by putting those stuff in the URL to be hit on google. I mean, I'm pretty sane person and I'm already planning to update my domain name... – Konrad Viltersten Jan 30 '16 at 01:37
  • A lot of the recent additions to Unicode will be rendered in color on most platforms, and slightly differently on each. Apart from the color, nothing new here. See e.g. http://www.unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html#2.3 – tripleee Jan 30 '16 at 14:17
  • Example renderings from multiple different platforms: http://emojipedia.org/pig-face/ (Twitter is clearly superior!) – tripleee Jan 30 '16 at 14:22
  • @tripleee Well, I guess I was in need to be educated, hehe. But when you said *nothing new here*, I felt in my head *...so, we landed on Mars!* followed by *...apart from different planet, nothing new here...*. Perhaps I'm easily amazed but I was a bit chocked when I saw the reddy dotty thingy, hahaha. – Konrad Viltersten Jan 30 '16 at 14:30
  • I mean platform (and font) differences in rendering a glyph are completely unsurprising even if you are unaware of Unicode. – tripleee Jan 30 '16 at 14:39
  • @tripleee I see where you come from and in the general case I agree. Here, it appeared as such a huge difference so I question if the rendering to such different looks is thought through. The name of the glyph is *big **red** dot*. Seems as the rendering is... not colorful... enough for some platforms. But in technical terms, I totally see your point. – Konrad Viltersten Jan 30 '16 at 15:51