Re: Localized Pages

[Mark Koopman <mark websidestory com>]

so auto-detection on first page viewed with a small, unintrusive
drop-down 
list above the fold initially selected to whatever auto-detection with a 
default of English.

does that make everyone happy?



Joakim Ziegler wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 09:10:40PM +0100, Christian Rose wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> > 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.
> 
> There's an additional problem with atuomatic detection, in addition to the
> ones people have already mentioned: Automatic detection is broken on certain
> combinations of browsers, proxies and so on. For instance, with my IE5
> installation, if I try to go to the Debian site and click on any of the
> documentation links that are supposed to use auto-detection, I get the
> document in Polish, despite the fact that my IE is set to English as the
> preferred language. It might be the proxy I use, but I doubt it. Now, if I
> get a site in Polish, I'm *very* lost, especially if autodetection is the
> sole/main way to detect languages.
> 
> Hence, given the obvious problems with this, I think autodetection to display
> a clearly visible menu choice, and English as a default, combined with
> www.se.gnome.org, www.fr.gnome.org and so on set up as aliases that do the
> right thing, so that people who want to specifically refer to one language
> (such as a newspaper or magazine in that language) can do so easily, is the
> best way to do this, if we want to avoid potentially fatal problems.
> 
> --
> Joakim Ziegler - Helix Code web monkey - joakim helixcode com - Radagast IRC
>       FIX sysop - free software coder - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer
>             http://www.avmaria.com/ - http://www.helixcode.com/
> 
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-- 

Mark Koopman  
Software Engineer

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