A lot of Richard's material and material by other members of the W3C
Core I18N WG are quite useful. Have a look at
http://www.w3.org/International/
Some additional thoughts. You're approach really depends on the number
of languages you need to support and the diversity of languages and
writing scripts. The greater the diversity and the number of languages
the more care you need to take with your internationalization architecture.
You need to make sure that all the components of the web site is
handling all languages and encodings correctly.
if you are lucky you'll be working with all the easy languages
(European, Japanese, Chinese and Korean).
Otherwise, some additional points to consider:
* Preferred layouts of pages may change between languages. Cultural
preferences will vary between dense and compact layouts on one hand to
open and spacious layouts on the other. What constitutes good and
optimal de sign is culture based.
* Your user interface needs to be mirrorable.
* Best to avoid CSS rules containing text-align: justify;
Proper justification really requires CSS3 support, and certain browsers
have bugs rendering justified text and break complex script rendering.
* For most languages line breaking will be handled automatically
(depending on the language and the operating system version in use). For
some languages you may require makeshift or manual line breaking techniques.
* If you are supporting multiple languages and writing scripts within
one site, consider using language specific styling using the language
pseudo selector. IE can not use this CSS selector, but useful javascript
libraries offer mechanisms for simulating support.
* Generic font family declarations are meaningless for some writing scripts.
Olly Hodgson wrote:
On 11/1/07, Andrew Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm asking for any gems of wisdom - links or first hand advice, mostly
technical, but anything that deals with the pitfalls in building
arabic websites would be great.
I found Richard Ishida's @media07 presentation, "Designing for
International Users: Practical Tips" rather enlightening. The audio
and slides are available from
<http://www.vivabit.com/atmedia2007/europe/schedule/>
Cheers,
--
Andrew Cunningham
Research and Development Coordinator (Vicnet)
State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia
Email: andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au
Alt. email: lang.support+AEA-gmail.com
Ph: +613-8664-7430 Fax:+613-9639-2175
Mob: 0421-450-816
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/
http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/
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