On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Дана Friday 11 September 2009 00:29:54 Erik Moeller написа:
2009/9/9 Tisza Gergő gtisza@gmail.com:
The LanguageSelector extension [1] can automatically set the interface language based on browser settings, which is nowadays the norm for every serious multilanguage web page. It is not used on WMF wikis, because it would interfere with caching.
I'm not convinced using the browser language settings for anything other than suggestions is a good practice, as it doesn't necessarily relate at all to language speaking ability of the user behind the browser (think Internet cafes, shared computers, etc.). I notice that it's possible to disable this behavior in the extension and just use it as a UI language picker, which I agree would be useful if we can make it work efficiently.
I believe I can say as a professional that you are correct, albeit it is my opinion that the browser settings can be usefully used as long as you leave the user quick, simple and obvious ability to change the language on his own.
One thing that would be *extremely* useful regardless is the ability to keep a language throughout the browsing session. This would mean that on, say, Italian Wikipedia, you could have a link to Wikimedia Commons like http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Pagina_principale?uselang=it - and when someone clicks on the featured picture *the interface would stay in Italian* and then when someone clicks on Entra / Registrati *the interface still stays in Italian*, and when someone actually registers the interface becomes Italian in his preferences and so on. This would do a lot for acceptance of Commons among the Wikipedias, and from there I see other useful ways it could be used. If this is done, recognition of the browser language could be more easily be experimented with.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I looked at this exact issue before (there's a bug for it too). It should be _very_ trivial to set uselang values into the session or a cookie. Right now uselang= only works on the page you're on, which isn't ideal.
-Chad