bedeviled mojo slop

Just a couple ofwords about one point on the Java i18n checklist posted a few days ago.

Localization preference should not be driven by browser's Accept-Language header. Some comments:

How do I know what localizations are available? What if I want the site in Russian but the site is only localized for English, German, and Spanish? A robust application would of course fallback to an available localization.
Keep the localization preference as part of my user registration. Don't offer user registration? Set a cookie indicating my localization preference. At best I have to click a button to submit and change my localization preference. At worst I've got to fumble around the language settings in my browser. Every second I'm changing a browser preference to use your application is another second I'm not actually using your application.
What if you can't change browser preferences to match available localizations? Let's say the application uses language "foo" in country "bar". You'd expect an Accept-Language header of foo-bar. OK. In Mozilla I can add foo-bar as a preferred language. Firefox only gives me the option to select from their list of languages. I'm sure there is a way to add a new language, but that's probably more steps than I really want to go through to use your application.
What if every application used Accept-Language to drive localization preference? What if I prefer to use some applications in one language? So, I've got to re-arrange my localization preferences depending on which application I'm using. Bleeeeeeeeech.

Keep your application preferences with the application.

Posted by david at 3:48 PM in java ... just java

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