[ckan-discuss] browser language detection

[David Read]

Last week CKAN started to detect the browser's configured language and
automatically switched to it. However there's been a bit of a debate over
how accurate this is and I'd love to know how others on this list feel.

I'm thinking it would be better to just display in a site's default
language, and if there is a browser language detected, have a pop-up
message offering to change to that language.

It would be nice to geo-locate users as another clue to the best language
for them, but I've assumed there is no free service. Or does anyone have
any suggestions?

(The final aspect is probably not very controversial, but if a CKAN user
selects a particular language, this preference is saved in a cookie, and
used the next time they visit.)

* Many browsers have the language setting incorrectly set. e.g. people
around the world who (mistakenly) download US versions of Mozilla, pirated
US copies in the far east.

* Although thedatahub.org has a worldwide audience, many CKAN instances are
designed for a particular country's citizens. So an Open Berlin site should
probably be in German as default for all.

This must be a solved problem. My a quick test with Google sites suggest
that on Search they use geo-location and in Analytics they use the browser
settings. Does anyone know any more?

David
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