Link tags: internationalisation

Mayerle’s Lithographed International Test Chart, 1907 – Circulating Now from the NLM Historical Collections

An impressive piece of internationlisation and inclusive design.

What are “unusual characters” – Terence Eden’s Blog

Be liberal in what you accept:

Basically, if your form can’t register Beyoncé – it has failed.

Use the :lang pseudo-class over the lang attribute selector for language-specific styles

This is a great explanation of the difference between the [lang] and :lang CSS selectors. I wouldn’t even have thought’ve the differences so this is really valuable to me.

The Elements of UI Engineering - Overreacted

These are good challenges to think about. Almost all of them are user-focused, and there’s a refreshing focus away from reaching for a library:

It’s tempting to read about these problems with a particular view library or a data fetching library in mind as a solution. But I encourage you to pretend that these libraries don’t exist, and read again from that perspective. How would you approach solving these issues?

Notes on `lang` by Taylor Hunt on CodePen

A really deep dive into the lang attribute, and the :lang() pseudo-class (hitherto unknown to me). This is all proving really useful for a little side project I’m working on.

Localisation and Translation on the Web

Practical advice from Ire on localising web pages.

Flags are not languages – A blog about designing global user experiences: beyond language, location & culture.

It’s a bit finger-pointy but this blog should be useful for anyone working on internationalisation.

This blog has two general aims: to show the fundamental flaws in using flags to represent languages and how to create good experiences when dealing with multilingual and multi-regional content.

World Wide Web, Not Wealthy Western Web (Part 2) – Smashing Magazine

The second part of Bruce’s excellent series begins by focusing on the usage of proxy browsers around the world:

Therefore, to make websites work in Opera Mini’s extreme mode, treat JavaScript as an enhancement, and ensure that your core functionality works without it. Of course, it will probably be clunkier without scripts, but if your website works and your competitors’ don’t work for Opera Mini’s quarter of a billion users, you’ll get the business.

But how!? Well, Bruce has the answer:

The best way to ensure that everyone gets your content is to write real, semantic HTML, to style it with CSS and ensure sensible fallbacks for CSS gradients, to use SVG for icons, and to treat JavaScript as an enhancement, ensuring that core functionality works without scripts. Package up your website with a manifest file and associated icons, add a service worker, and you’ll have a progressive web app in conforming browsers and a normal website everywhere else.

I call this amazing new technique “progressive enhancement.”

You heard it here first, folks!

CSS Flexbox Is Entirely Logical (Almost) / Paul Robert Lloyd

Paul is digging deep into flexbox and finding it particularly useful for internationalisation …but there are still some gotchas.

Let’s Talk About RTL

Some very handy techniques for working with right-to-left text.

ishida >> blog » HTML5 adds new translate attribute

Richard gives the lowdown on the new translate attribute in HTML.

Personal names around the world

A terrific overview by Richard of the variations in names around the world:

How do people’s names differ around the world, and what are the implications of those differences on the design of forms, ontologies, etc. for the Web?

BBC - BBC Internet Blog: BBC World Service Language Websites: user experience and typography

A fascinating look at the intersection of typography and internationalisation on the BBC’s World Service site.

>> blog » html5′s new bdi element

An excellent explanation from Richard of the bdi element (bi-directional isolate) for handling a mixture of left to right and right to left languages in HTML5.

W3C HTML5 Chinese Interest Group

Some excellent cross-polination between HTML5 and internationalisation — remember the other two Ws that come before Web in WWW.

Code: Flickr Developer Blog » Language Detection: A Witch’s Brew?

This. This right here is how you manage sites in multiple languages. Are you listening, Google?

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Yahoo have created a Twitter alternative... but they don't state anywhere on this site that it's US-only.

as days pass by » Blog Archive » Internationalisation

Stuart posts a really handy string for testing internationalisation: Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn