For whatever reason there is this silly sign that should indicate that a link is external.

It is a silly thing for two reasons: *It does not show itself in an IE browser *When it is used in a language that is left to right like Arabic or Hebrew, it insists on being on the right side of the word in effect blocking out the first character.

Could we PLEASE get rid of this silly thing. And if someone insists on keeping it, could it be fixed so that it behaves properly ...

Not knowing too much about CSS compatibility in several browsers, it seems that the "silly sign", as you put it, is like this for several reasons:

* IE doesn't support too much of the CSS standard, IIRC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the icons are implemented using CSS2, which IE doesn't support too well. * CSS, in theory, can handle bidi correctly, but not in real life

I believe that there is some user CSS that you can apply to hide it, but it only works on a few browsers.

A bit off topic, but what are the practical consequences of changing the pseudo-class selectors from one colon to two in CSS3?