[ckan-discuss] browser language detection

Mon Nov 14 13:03:22 GMT 2011

On 14 November 2011 12:43, Seb Bacon <seb.bacon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 November 2011 16:37, David Read <david.read at okfn.org> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> I agree.  It is quite standard for people to have their browser
> language as en-US in many countries.
>
>> 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?
>
> Yes, geo-location is likely to be better if you want to automate it.
>
> http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country
>
> But I wouldn't automatically detect it at all.  Just have a default
> language for each site, as you suggest.

Thanks Seb. Really good to get some support for this direction.

David

>
> Seb
>
>> (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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>>
>
>
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