Re: Inconsistency on translated pages links.
On Fri, Apr 27, 2007, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
> w.d.o isn't the only content negotiation using site out there, and I
> don't see why we shouldn't try to educate the users in that way - in
> fact tell them that they are lying to their browser about their
> preference, so why we should let them live with a lie?
Purity and education is good, but do we want to shove that down our
users' throats? They are not even our users, there are Windows users
interested in learning about Debian and we should not refuse to make it
easier for them.
Also, w.d.o may not be the only site using content-negociation, but
since not all pages are translated you always end up seeing English at
some point.
> Besides, what would you really store there? You most propably can
> store only a _single_ language after clicking such a link, and end up
> with well undefined behavior if one of the following pages isn't
> translated into that language and get complaints about that again.
This is trivially worked around by prepending a note saying "Sorry,
the page you requested is not available in $LANGUAGE, we're showing the
English version instead" at the top of untranslated pages.
Having a cookie to store the language choice as soon as the user
clicks on the language name or a little flag icon, and have this cookie
override the browser content negociation settings seems extremely
reasonable to me. Everyone is happy.
> > What if they want to change the preferred language only for a
> > particular session?
>
> And what would be the reasoning behind such a wish? How common would
> you see such a wish?
o Lending my computer to my girlfriend
o Using a public terminal
o Not wanting to browse the Debian website in French because I'm not
satisfied with the translations but still wanting to see all other
websites in French?
o Using a web browser that does not support content negociation
> > I understand your concern regarding technical complexity but usability
> > has a price.
>
> I don't see much usability enhancement by that suggestion, to be
> honest.
I do see much. Not sure how common my views are, though.
Cheers,
--
Sam.
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