Re: Localized Pages

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Joakim Ziegler wrote:

> > just stating this because i dont want the 'kiss system' to be associated
> > with people NOT interested in localization.
>
> I agree. It seems to me that a reasonable approach, from what I've seen,
> would be the following:
>
> Present the site in English, and have a menu to select the language to use.
> Use the language header the browser sends to put that language on top of the
> menu, where it's most easily accessible. That seems like a reasonable
> tradeoff to me.
>
> Anyone disagree?

Yes. :)

I think we should make the site as userfriendly as possible. In that 
effort I think a strategy of not asking the visitor unnecessary 
questions or otherwise prevent his or hers easy access to information 
more than necessary is reasonable.

I don't think that asking the user what language he wants when he has 
already said this once (in his preferences), and thus not respect the 
very setting that should control this, is a very nice thing to do.
More important than this, this will make visitors uninterested that 
would want the information in their own language but aren't prepared to 
spend some time clicking or trying to understand the links on the site 
to get it presented in an understandable way to them, or even realize 
that this possibility exist.


Even if the detected language setting should be presented as the 
top-most choice in a drop down box on an otherwise English-by-default 
page, I don't think this is the correct way. Most web developers know 
that if you can't attract the visitor that wants information fast, and 
convince him or her in so-and-so-many seconds that this is the page he 
should read, he/she won't stay.

This, I think, is also true for localization. If an international 
visitor, who is not fluent with English, that wants quick information 
about what GNOME is should be presented with an English default I don't 
think that he would spend that much time to even figure out if it can be 
set otherwise. It would just be "oh well, this is not the information 
taht I wanted". That's why I think the default is so important.

And then again, the language setting in your browser doesn't say "I want 
all content in English by default, whatever I set this setting to". Its 
message is "if I set this setting, this is the language that will be the 
default to me". So if I set it to "Dutch", it means that I really want 
pages to appear in Dutch. I think we should respect that.


Christian