"Always ALWAYS do for the user what you can do for them."
I wouldn't say always DO, i'd rather say always give the flexibility to
CHOOSE, because we never know exactly what all users want or need. Gregor, I
totally agree with you. Google search is my top of mind example for this
kind of behavior -
For choosing a default language, you could (or even should) use the
language preference of the user.
With each request the browser includes the language preference of the
user. It's stored in the variable HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE and will look
like something as "en-ca,en;q=0.8,fr-ca;q=0.5,fr;q=0.3".
If you are working on an International site, I'd suggest a 3 level
approach - last level optional.
First level: Regional Domains.
.com for (U.S) English, .co.uk for (U.K) English, .co.au for whatever
we speak in Australia, .co.jp for Japanese, etc. I'd start here for
the following reasons:
a) I'd
Gregor. You are in the vast minority.
ONLY using IP is dangerous. A splash page is a bad idea because you
route 99% of your users to a useless page. Make it easy to switch to
a new language, auto-detect, and you will be fine.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
As someone who recently returned from Denmark to the US I'm not loving
the auto detect of IP address.
I got sevved a few sites in Danish...and I don't know any Danish.
I understand how valuable it can be for the tons of folks who are on
their own environment but for the frequent taveller it
" A few questions...
Should sites auto detect IP addresses and serve default settings
according to country, language?"
I would say no, if only based on personal experience.
Our corporate connection goes through our headquarters in France.
Google in particular seems to be determined to direct me t
William stole my reply! ;-)
And of course, write the names of the languages *in* their own
language (Español, not Spanish). Not sure about everyone else, but I
don't know how to read the word "English" written in Mandarin
characters ;-)
I would be careful (avoid?) using country flags as icons for
Always ALWAYS do for the user what you can do for them. Auto-detect
and provide -some- way to second guess the machine. But don't expect
a lot of people to second guess.
The best language picker is the one the user never sees.
If you can't auto-detect, and you almost always can, a decent picker
wo
Jason,
Did you read my mind I was just about to send out a similar post.
My line of thought was about best practices on how users select countries and
languages on global websites.
A few questions...
Should sites auto detect IP addresses and serve default settings according to
country, langua
