Today, XRIs can not be resolved natively by webbrowsers and operating systems. This means that you cannot just enter an XRI like @free*earth or xri://@free*earth in your webbrowser and expect it to work. We envision that soon XRI resolution will become an integral part of networking infrastructure, similar to DNS resolution. Then you could simply type an XRI in the address bar of you webbrowser or in the To: field of you e-mail client, and it will resolve to whatever URI is configured at the appropriate service endpoint of the XRI.

However, until then there are a number of ways to help you get started with XRI technology:

• You can use specific XRI-enabled software to resolve XRIs. One example is our XRI Ping online tool, where you can enter any XRI and get a list of clickable URIs to which it resolves.
• You can use a browser plugins that will enable your webbrowser to recognize XRIs in the address bar. See the "Firefox Plugin" page in our Tools section for more information.
• You can use any XRI in the form of a "HXRI", which is an XRI prepended with the HTTP URL of an XRI proxy resolver. If you enter a HXRI in a webbrowser or other software, the XRI will be resolved by the proxy, and you will be redirected to the appropriate target URI. This works in any non-XRI-aware software and - as of today - is the preferred way of using XRIs. See the "xri.freexri.com" page in our Specials section for more information.