4 ms·

I hope I can always get access to the URL. I frequently have to switch the 'smart' geo tracking language selection in the querystring from de-DE that some short

by junto 13y ago

I hope I can always get access to the URL. I frequently have to switch the 'smart' geo tracking language selection in the querystring from de-DE that some shortsighted developer thought meant Germany === German to en-US or en-GB. I'm looking at you Google as the worst offender. I swear that some developers have never left the US. Geo location != preferred language. Accept-Language header in my browser is telling you what I want. Listen to it.

Semaphor 13y ago
The accept-language header is dead. It's simply ignored by every site. Some crappy sites like Origin even make it impossible to set the language to anything but German even by changing the URL directly. Google took years to even allow me to manually set everything to English, until about 1-2 years ago some settings were impossible for me to reach in English even when everything was set to English. It's just like with Windows, applications use the location instead of the OS language to chose what language to default to. L10n is broken. And no one seems to have any real interest in fixing it. The tools are there but they get ignored by pretty much everyone.
- xxs 13y ago
  Geo-location by IP is one of most horrid abomination ever created. Try a road trip in Europe, every single day google believes I speak/read/understand a different language. If that's not bad enough, living in a country where one doesn't speak the local language basically means not using the service. Stuff like .../?hl=en may help indeed (but it has to be put manually.
  - Ironlink 13y ago
    I am unable to recreate this problem. My Firefox sends the following Accept-Language: "en-us,en;q=0.8,sv-se;q=0.5,sv;q=0.3". When I go to Google.com in a new private browsing context, I am redirected to Google.se with English language. When I go straight to Google.se in a new private browsing context, the page is in English.
    - junto 13y ago
      To be fair. I've just rechecked and you are right. I have the same behavior in Germany. Maybe someone is listening! Ads though. Still in German. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm even more blind to them in the wrong language. I guess that is a good thing!
  - unsignedint 13y ago
    Problem is a lot of site operators don't differentiate location vs. language. As someone living in the US who speaks English and Japanese, I often get annoyed by the fact changing the language would affect feature set to match the language and vice-versa. I almost want something like ja-US and en-JP!
  - gman99 13y ago
    Just go to the site: http://www.google.com/ncr http://www.google.com/ncr (I assume it stands for "No Country Recognition" but I'm unsure of that). Visit it once and I believe it stores a permanent cookie on your computer telling google not to re-direct you to a country specific site. Been using it for about 10yrs now as it annoys me when I get re-directed when accessing sites over a vpn.
ludwigvan 13y ago
Try https://www.google.com/ncr https://www.google.com/ncr (no country redirect)

by junto 13y ago

Semaphor 13y ago

The accept-language header is dead. It's simply ignored by every site. Some crappy sites like Origin even make it impossible to set the language to anything but German even by changing the URL directly. Google took years to even allow me to manually set everything to English, until about 1-2 years ago some settings were impossible for me to reach in English even when everything was set to English. It's just like with Windows, applications use the location instead of the OS language to chose what language to default to. L10n is broken. And no one seems to have any real interest in fixing it. The tools are there but they get ignored by pretty much everyone.

xxs 13y ago
Geo-location by IP is one of most horrid abomination ever created. Try a road trip in Europe, every single day google believes I speak/read/understand a different language. If that's not bad enough, living in a country where one doesn't speak the local language basically means not using the service. Stuff like .../?hl=en may help indeed (but it has to be put manually.
- Ironlink 13y ago
  I am unable to recreate this problem. My Firefox sends the following Accept-Language: "en-us,en;q=0.8,sv-se;q=0.5,sv;q=0.3". When I go to Google.com in a new private browsing context, I am redirected to Google.se with English language. When I go straight to Google.se in a new private browsing context, the page is in English.
  - junto 13y ago
    To be fair. I've just rechecked and you are right. I have the same behavior in Germany. Maybe someone is listening! Ads though. Still in German. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm even more blind to them in the wrong language. I guess that is a good thing!
- unsignedint 13y ago
  Problem is a lot of site operators don't differentiate location vs. language. As someone living in the US who speaks English and Japanese, I often get annoyed by the fact changing the language would affect feature set to match the language and vice-versa. I almost want something like ja-US and en-JP!
- gman99 13y ago
  Just go to the site: http://www.google.com/ncr http://www.google.com/ncr (I assume it stands for "No Country Recognition" but I'm unsure of that). Visit it once and I believe it stores a permanent cookie on your computer telling google not to re-direct you to a country specific site. Been using it for about 10yrs now as it annoys me when I get re-directed when accessing sites over a vpn.

ludwigvan 13y ago

Try https://www.google.com/ncr https://www.google.com/ncr (no country redirect)