4 ms·
Yes, it is. However, if you don't include search keys in the text presented to the user, it isn't going help when you get a dialog that says (FTA): Sterownik
by halostatue 17y ago
Yes, it is. However, if you don't include search keys in the text presented to the user, it isn't going help when you get a dialog that says (FTA):
Sterownik ekranu przestał działać, ale odzyskał sprawność.
That's missing something at the beginning or end that allows a search engine to say "aha! this is looking for this error message, which in English is this".
This is a hard problem, at the same time; the translated log files[1] from work look something like this:
2009-12-13 14:21 BACK-E-00234 <text here, with optional parameter values>
The key piece is "BACK-E-00234" (it's from the BACK module, it's an Error, and it's message 00234). When we have messages to display to the user in a dialog, we don't show that key information (or have a way of getting to it) because it's ugly.
It's unlikely that the message mentioned in the article was hard-coded to Polish; instead the author is arguing about users and the searchability of non-English error messages. To increase the searchability, you need to include key details (e.g., "BACK-E-00234") that make the message significantly uglier to read. One possible way around this is to make sure your error dialogs are selectable/copyable (maybe put a button to do this), but on copy silently insert the search key details.
[1] Our untranslated log files look more like:
<M ID="234" T="2009-12-13T14:21:00.00000" S="E" M="BACK">...parameter tags here...</M>
- rbanffy 17y agoHmmm... Including a button on dialog boxes for googling (or bing'ing) the error in language-neutral form... Nice item for a future GUI wishlist.
- halostatue 17y agoI'm not sure that a button for search is the right way to go; it would work, definitely, but at the cost of cluttering your UI. Insertion into copy is probably a better idea, because you may be emailing the error message to a systems administrator instead of searching it.
- rbanffy 17y agoPerhaps a collapsed details or additional actions pane
- blasdel 17y agoTry hitting Ctrl-C in a standard active Win32 dialog. It already puts something nice on the clipboard automatically :) You might put the key information in the dialog's window title.
- herdrick 17y agoActually this is something the search engines can and should do. Offering this on Bing would be a very smart thing for Microsoft to do. They'd have a nice little competitive advantage from their easy access to the bundles of localization strings. (I doubt if it'd slow Google down much, but even if Bing were the best search engine to use for only a few days after the release of a new MS product that would really help them to get people to try Bing.