[theforum] internationalisation

Erika ekm at seastorm.com
Sun Dec 7 13:27:52 CST 2008


Erika's not-so-hidden agenda #174 (it's hard to keep track of them all) 
is to use evolt.org as a sort of case study and gain some experience in 
i18n, which I think is sort of the tardy "next wave" of web standards 
(putting the "world wide" back into "world wide web").

I'm eventually hoping to do some work on the subject with a former 
colleague of mine (see: stevekemper.com).  His experience is 
business-oriented, and while evolt.org is a different kind of animal, we 
already have models to look toward in the W3C and Wikipedia.

Kemper's materials indicate that for right-to-left languages also want 
layouts reversed layouts (sidebars, logins, everything).  Molly 
Holtzschlag wrote an article in ALA (and has some presentation materials 
on the W3C site) that includes a detail about different ways of 
emphasizing text.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/worldgrowssmall

I think that this kind of thinking can only make our site better.  Maybe 
*much* better.

One thing evolt.org regularly suffers from (since 2001) is "link creep." 
  Dumping piles of links into our sidebars, when for usability purposes, 
we should be cutting back to essentials and focusing on clear, 
consistent navigation.  Less is more.  Internationalisation is like a 
progressive enhancement mentality: start with your plain, simple, 
universal site.  Then "enhance" outward.  (That's what I've gathered, 
anyway.)

Erika






More information about the theforum mailing list