6 ms·

This is a good idea in theory, but completely unworkable in practice. Most users do not have the skills or know-how to navigate whatever Accept-Language setting

by avar 8y ago

This is a good idea in theory, but completely unworkable in practice. Most users do not have the skills or know-how to navigate whatever Accept-Language setting their device is exposing. But yeah, sites should have a way to sticky it once you have a profile and log in etc., but most users aren't going through that path for most sites.

jfoucher 8y ago
In Firefox: Preferences -> Language and appearance -> Language
- Tomte 8y ago
  Exactly. That's too complicated for a large portion of browser users. I'm not kidding and I'm not dissing them. They shouldn't have to fiddle with language settings. That's a tech failure.
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    Isn't the default value whatever the OS is set to? Your "average user" shouldnt need to fiddle anyway.
  - gnud 8y ago
    What is actually a tech failure, is assuming I understand Spanish if I happen to be in Spain. That sort of ham-handed, short-sighted approach drives me nuts. You only need "fiddling with language settings" if you want something other than how your operating system is configured.
    - cmg 8y ago
      Google actually did this at one point. I was in the Netherlands when I signed up for Google+. I don't speak Dutch and hadn't changed any of my language settings - the only way they knew was via my IP address. The UI was mostly in English, but all my circles (or whatever they were called) were named in Dutch.
      - JoeMalt 8y ago
        I get the weirdest language bugs with Google: - The info box on the right hand side of the search results intermittently shows up in German - A suggested event (a football match) in the UK (where I am) had both team's names transliterated into Cyrillic - An airport on Maps consistently shows up in either French or Finnish (or both!)
  - blotter_paper 8y ago
    If this is too complicated, it is the fault of the user agent. That's a different issue than whether a website should respect a requested language if it is available. You're arguing that the user agents are flawed, so we should have flawed content delivery to compensate. This is how flaws get folded into systems and magnified over time. Just fix whatever flaws exist in the user agents, language selection based on http headers is a pretty good solution for the half of the problem it covers.
ip26 8y ago
Presumably they wouldn't have to. If they are running en-US Windows, they get en-US websites. If they are running fr-CH Windows, that's the websites they get. You don't really have to worry that someone running ja Windows can't read Japanese. (Of course, you'd still expose the option to change this from the inherited default in the browser's preferences)
- avar 8y ago
  Yes you do. Plenty of people using an OS in whatever language can barely speak a word of that language. Most commonly they'll use an English OS for whatever reason and want to browse websites in their local language. This is why you'll find that a lot of website language detection tends to discount English specifically. I.e. if your Accept-Language is "en" in France they'll probably give you French, but if it's e.g. Japanese in France they might think that's a "real" setting and give you Japanese. Or, as I'm sure a lot of non-English speaking technical users here can attest to, they like to use an English OS UI on their laptop or phone, but speak the local language and want browsing a local website to just work. Non-technical users do that too, but have no idea how to tweak their Accept-Language independently from their OS language. Really, do armchair commentators here think that programmers at major websites like Google that have enough data to know how people are likely to switch languages from the default haven't thought of just implementing what's literally the most simple thing you can do, which is to obey Accept-Language?
  - jakub_g 8y ago
    BTW. I accidentally discovered that in case of accessing google.com from non-English speaking country, `en-US` is treated as non-reliable (probably because many devices have this set as default), whereas `en-IE` for example is treated as reliable. Also appending any non-English language after `en-US` does the trick AFAIR. Basically `en-US`-only Accept-Language seems to be treated as "perhaps default language of a device and user didn't change it, we should not rely on it" and IP-based localization is applied in that case ("in France? ok show French version").
sk5t 8y ago
In approaching 100% of cases the operating system pesters you to set a language+locale during setup, and the browser propagates that via Accept-Language. The advanced use case is the user who wishes a set of > 1 weighted language ranges; e.g. de-DE most preferred, then English in any culture, then Latin American Spanish.
alistairSH 8y ago
Doesn't the browser pick up the OS language setting? That's going to be correct for most users. And browsers could make the override easily discoverable in preferences (at least on MacOS, app preferences are in a standard place from the user's perspective: File -> Preferences).
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Tiny correction, the standard is actually `AppName` → Preferences under macOS X.
- groby_b 8y ago
  That's actually not correct for most users. Most well-known case is India, where the OS language is usually set to 'English' for $REASONS, but people still prefer content in Hindi. (Or Urdu) Guessing what language a user actually speaks is not straightforward.
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    What are the reasons? It still doesn't make sense to use the same behaviour in Europe, where in my experience the OS language is almost always the preferred language of the user. (Especially on a mobile.)
    - hyperman1 8y ago
      In my experience, most European sites will/should consider 'English' as default/unset/unknown. So when in German,y, if the header says French, give French . If the header says English (US or UK), give German.
      - Symbiote 8y ago
        What am I supposed to do, as a native English speaker living in Denmark? I've tried en and en,da, but I almost always get Danish in Denmark and the local language if I travel.
throwaway34241 8y ago
How is having a significant number of users be served the wrong language for every site they visit, then having to navigate and create a profile and set the language for each site individually in a different way, in any way an acceptable solution either? If for historical reasons Accept-Language needs to pass through the OS locale, which is wrong and can't be changed, why not just standardize an optional User-Requested-Language(s) header, that only appears if the user explicitly sets it in the browser? The current solution is awful and improving it doesn't seem like rocket science but there seems to be zero interest in fixing it. Stuff like this is why closed platforms like Facebook probably have a brighter future than the open web.

by avar 8y ago

jfoucher 8y ago

In Firefox: Preferences -> Language and appearance -> Language

Tomte 8y ago
Exactly. That's too complicated for a large portion of browser users. I'm not kidding and I'm not dissing them. They shouldn't have to fiddle with language settings. That's a tech failure.
- zdragnar 8y ago
  Isn't the default value whatever the OS is set to? Your "average user" shouldnt need to fiddle anyway.
- gnud 8y ago
  What is actually a tech failure, is assuming I understand Spanish if I happen to be in Spain. That sort of ham-handed, short-sighted approach drives me nuts. You only need "fiddling with language settings" if you want something other than how your operating system is configured.
  - cmg 8y ago
    Google actually did this at one point. I was in the Netherlands when I signed up for Google+. I don't speak Dutch and hadn't changed any of my language settings - the only way they knew was via my IP address. The UI was mostly in English, but all my circles (or whatever they were called) were named in Dutch.
    - JoeMalt 8y ago
      I get the weirdest language bugs with Google: - The info box on the right hand side of the search results intermittently shows up in German - A suggested event (a football match) in the UK (where I am) had both team's names transliterated into Cyrillic - An airport on Maps consistently shows up in either French or Finnish (or both!)
- blotter_paper 8y ago
  If this is too complicated, it is the fault of the user agent. That's a different issue than whether a website should respect a requested language if it is available. You're arguing that the user agents are flawed, so we should have flawed content delivery to compensate. This is how flaws get folded into systems and magnified over time. Just fix whatever flaws exist in the user agents, language selection based on http headers is a pretty good solution for the half of the problem it covers.

ip26 8y ago

Presumably they wouldn't have to. If they are running en-US Windows, they get en-US websites. If they are running fr-CH Windows, that's the websites they get. You don't really have to worry that someone running ja Windows can't read Japanese. (Of course, you'd still expose the option to change this from the inherited default in the browser's preferences)

avar 8y ago
Yes you do. Plenty of people using an OS in whatever language can barely speak a word of that language. Most commonly they'll use an English OS for whatever reason and want to browse websites in their local language. This is why you'll find that a lot of website language detection tends to discount English specifically. I.e. if your Accept-Language is "en" in France they'll probably give you French, but if it's e.g. Japanese in France they might think that's a "real" setting and give you Japanese. Or, as I'm sure a lot of non-English speaking technical users here can attest to, they like to use an English OS UI on their laptop or phone, but speak the local language and want browsing a local website to just work. Non-technical users do that too, but have no idea how to tweak their Accept-Language independently from their OS language. Really, do armchair commentators here think that programmers at major websites like Google that have enough data to know how people are likely to switch languages from the default haven't thought of just implementing what's literally the most simple thing you can do, which is to obey Accept-Language?
- jakub_g 8y ago
  BTW. I accidentally discovered that in case of accessing google.com from non-English speaking country, `en-US` is treated as non-reliable (probably because many devices have this set as default), whereas `en-IE` for example is treated as reliable. Also appending any non-English language after `en-US` does the trick AFAIR. Basically `en-US`-only Accept-Language seems to be treated as "perhaps default language of a device and user didn't change it, we should not rely on it" and IP-based localization is applied in that case ("in France? ok show French version").

sk5t 8y ago

In approaching 100% of cases the operating system pesters you to set a language+locale during setup, and the browser propagates that via Accept-Language. The advanced use case is the user who wishes a set of > 1 weighted language ranges; e.g. de-DE most preferred, then English in any culture, then Latin American Spanish.

alistairSH 8y ago

Doesn't the browser pick up the OS language setting? That's going to be correct for most users. And browsers could make the override easily discoverable in preferences (at least on MacOS, app preferences are in a standard place from the user's perspective: File -> Preferences).

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
Tiny correction, the standard is actually `AppName` → Preferences under macOS X.
groby_b 8y ago
That's actually not correct for most users. Most well-known case is India, where the OS language is usually set to 'English' for $REASONS, but people still prefer content in Hindi. (Or Urdu) Guessing what language a user actually speaks is not straightforward.
- Symbiote 8y ago
  What are the reasons? It still doesn't make sense to use the same behaviour in Europe, where in my experience the OS language is almost always the preferred language of the user. (Especially on a mobile.)
  - hyperman1 8y ago
    In my experience, most European sites will/should consider 'English' as default/unset/unknown. So when in German,y, if the header says French, give French . If the header says English (US or UK), give German.
    - Symbiote 8y ago
      What am I supposed to do, as a native English speaker living in Denmark? I've tried en and en,da, but I almost always get Danish in Denmark and the local language if I travel.

throwaway34241 8y ago

How is having a significant number of users be served the wrong language for every site they visit, then having to navigate and create a profile and set the language for each site individually in a different way, in any way an acceptable solution either? If for historical reasons Accept-Language needs to pass through the OS locale, which is wrong and can't be changed, why not just standardize an optional User-Requested-Language(s) header, that only appears if the user explicitly sets it in the browser? The current solution is awful and improving it doesn't seem like rocket science but there seems to be zero interest in fixing it. Stuff like this is why closed platforms like Facebook probably have a brighter future than the open web.