121–130 of 200 posts
I always thought they should be using the flag of the UN to indicate the location of a language selection dropdown, and just list the name of the languages in their native form in the list. But being able to choose the language is always much better than sites forcing you to use a specific version of a site depending on your location, which is such a pain. Side note: seeing the Taiwanese flag for traditional Chinese…
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The should be presented mainly, mostly and primarily in their native form. The form for currently set language should be additional. It's a no-brainer which makes demand for using flags unnecessary, almost making it absurd to use them. But, wait. 语言设定 is "Language settings" and 重置设备 is "Reset device". So the problem here is a bit different, right?
Exactly, that's also how Apple (I'm starting to feel bad to constantly mention them) does it, the native form is "normal font face", the translated one is in lighter grey.
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Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software . That is an easy, universal UI pattern. I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.
Typically the flag of the current language setting
If asked to make icons for languages, whet else would you even use instead of flags? Icons help find things faster, and the users are used to seeing flags next to language labels. In some cases, a single flag indeed does not sufficiently describe an option. In this case, combine, like, two flags, e.g. (flag of Spain)(flag of Columbia), or invent some other clever icon to disambiguate selection.
Counterpoint to this website: it is convenient to have symbols to represent things. I don't see them suggesting anything better than flags.
I'm not from the UK but if I'm on a non-English site it's super obvious that a UK flag is likely to take me to English. If there's a clearer way, sure, but a lot of this seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, as an excuse to remind everyone that flags aren't languages which I don't think anybody was ever implying.
Counterpoint to this website: it is convenient to have symbols to represent things. I don't see them suggesting anything better than flags.
OTOH, this “which country best represents the language” question can provide unhappy geopolitical reminders to people, so I think we should not do it.
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> I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. That's why the languages should be presented in their "own" native form (name and alphabet), at least additionally. Which - using the native form and the translation in the current active locale - Apple does, btw., so at least on MacOS your problem does not exist.
The should be presented mainly, mostly and primarily in their native form. The form for currently set language should be additional. It's a no-brainer which makes demand for using flags unnecessary, almost making it absurd to use them. But, wait. 语言设定 is "Language settings" and 重置设备 is "Reset device". So the problem here is a bit different, right?
I wonder if flags fix that one in any way.
It's the convention on sites to put the flags as a top-level element (but you could put "English" there just as easily). But on any device with a menu, the flags are usually only on the language list.
But the flag was useful to show in the ui where the language setting was. This is especially useful when the language has been set to something I cannot read. I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. Also flags in the menu means that I can find English easier than 英语
Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software . That is an easy, universal UI pattern. I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.
As just one example of what we're talking about, let's take Ireland: after generations of cultural oppression England caused a famine in Ireland that reduced the population by at least 20% between millions of deaths and millions of immigrants. Ireland still hasn't recovered its population to the pre-famine levels.
The Irish are literally still recovering from their abuse at the hands of England. They speak English because England made it so through generations of deliberate cultural extermination. It's unreasonable for you to dismiss their desire to not identify themselves with the British flag as some "type of PCness".
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Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag. What flag would you expect to see? As for finding the language in the menu, listening a language in the foreign language seems like bad design too. The menu should list “English” as an option! See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#/languages
I personally had no idea that icon let you change the language of articles (a concept I explicitly looked for before). Still confused at what the icon is actually supposed to mean.
Here's how the same chooser looks on Wiktionary — which is also how it used to look on Wikipedia, back when Wikipedia used the full default MediaWiki sidebar: https://oshi.at/HhVH/zhWZ.png
You've got a subsection header "In other languages"; and under it, a list of links titled with the names of languages. (This reads as: these are a set of popular suggested alternative language views of this page, and clicking these links will take you directly to the page in those languages.) And at the end of this list, aligned as the final list item, there's a button with a weird icon with the text "51 more" on it. (And this reads as: clicking here will expand some flyout menu or modal, which will allow you to see you the rest of the list of language options, and perhaps search within them.)
In that context, you don't really have to understand the meaning of the icon to know what to do; rather, the interaction of changing language is directed by the rest of the design, and going through it teaches you the meaning of the icon. Which allows you to later understand its use elsewhere in the site's design.
