Re: Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies

At 3:01 PM +0100 11/28/07, Jochem Maas wrote:

tedd wrote: So, sniffing the browser to determine language isn't the same as browser

sniffing -- OK.

there is no sniffing of the browser - merely a case of parsing the contents of the Accept-Language header if the browser sent it along with the request regardless of what browser is being used. there is no reason to assume that anyone would want to spoof the Accept-Language header to contain something that doesn't correspond with what the user wants ... why set japanese as a preferred language if you don't speak it? and if they do do that and end up getting a site in japanese then really that is the users problem not the site developers. it not the same as ouput different content/layout/etc based on the UserAgent string - which is known to be spoofed in order to combat idiot developers attempts to force people to use certain browser (for whatever reason) I mean, we don't assume that the requested URL is not what the user really wanted? e.g. user requests example.com/foo.php but we know that it's likely to be spoofed so we'll help out and server them example.com/bar.php ??? besides which I did state that using Accept-Language header to determine a [probable] suitable language should be done in addition to offering the user an explicit language selection mechanism. lastly I think using GEO-IP services to determine location and thereby an implied language is worthless in general - I can be sitting anywhere on the planet and still want to view content in Dutch, not to mention things like global corporate gateways, anonymous proxies, etc, etc. The exception to this could be when the website in question is specifically offering localised data (e.g. find me a restaurant/garage/whatever in Rotterdam)

Thanks for the explanation -- I didn't realize most of that.

Sorry, my bad. no need for the sarcasm Tedd, seems we have differing opinions on this - although my gut feeling is that your hung up on something that's not strictly relevant in this situation. :-)

Jochem: This just hasn't been my week -- everyone (long story) thinks I'm being sarcastic when I'm not. The "Sorry, my bad" means "I apologize, my mistake." How can that be taken as sarcasm? As for being "hung-up" -- again, I'm clueless. I mistakenly thought that anything obtained from the browser was subject to suspicion as is any outside data. But apparently you can "trust" (I realize within certain limits) some things provided by the browser -- that's news to me. Boy, I got to work on my communication skills because everyone can't be wrong, right? Again, thanks for your explanation -- and that's not being sarcastic. I'm just trying to communicate without offending/annoying anyone. Maybe I should end every line with a smiley? :-) Cheers, tedd -- ------- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com