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Lessons for uncultured web developers

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Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#71

Post by DanBC »

I like this article! Internationalisation is something I'm sort of interested in, although I haven't done anything about it.

1) I know that I've lost this war, but it's a shame that the browser that your customer is using is relevant. It's a shame that people can't just code standards compliant code and it'll run fine on any standards compliant browser.

2) Using letters instead of numbers for months is good. I'd prefer ISO 8601, but I know that's going to be a long time.

3) Names are a difficult problem. There's money to be made with a decent name input, validation, fixing library.

4) Is complicated for me. Do I want people to code standards compliant stuff with graceful degradation? Or do I want people to push those using obsolete broken systems to use something better? I had hoped that the rise of netbooks, and then smart phones, and then tablets, would make coders realise that many people are using weak[1] computers and code appropriately. Unfortunately many people have a regular site (big and stupid) and a mobile site (small, stupid, and usually broken beyond usable).

8) I'd love a better fix for timezones. I'd love some kind of markup magic that means Bob can type (something like) and it gets autochanged to whatever my local timezone is. (On a tangent, I want Minecraft to buy Swatch BEATS and so people can use those for online competitions etc.)

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#72

Post by nollidge »

uummuu5 wrote: post #61

calling people "uncultured" for sticking to the conventions of their country is ridiculous and invalidates the author's entire argument. He makes 1 (MAYBE 2) valid argument(s) in the entire piece and largely comes off as a pretentious ass. By his logic we shouldn't have to call this language "English" because it's not just spoken in England. The US invented the internet, if he wants to impose his warped, socialist vi…

> calling people "uncultured" for sticking to the conventions of their country is ridiculous

It's the opposite of ridiculous, actually; it kind of exactly fits the definition of the word. I feel like you're going out of your way to take this personally?

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#73

Post by ceph_ »

icebraining wrote: post #42
klodolph wrote: post #39

> Why are these US only? It’s a conundrum which we probably don’t regularly need to worry about, but it’s unusual all the same (I’d love to hear insight on why there’s no .us on these). History of the internet: it was invented as a US department of defense research project, and grew into the beast it is today. You could buy a .com address years before the internet existed outside the US. Note that .uk exists for the…

.arpa didn't disappear, it changed its purpose.

Yes. Used for reverse DNS lookups.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#74

Post by andyjohnson0 »

DanBC wrote: post #59
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #29

Another lesson that might be useful is not to assume that the week starts on a particular day. I live in the UK and the general convention here is the the week on Monday. In find calendars (presumably designed in the US) that start on Sunday particularly frustrating and error-prone. Not being able to customise this is uncultured. Different cultures have different conventions, and if a seven-day week is the norm then…

> I live in the UK and the general convention here is the the week on Monday. Uh, no. The work week starts on Monday, but the week starts on Sunday. The link you provide supports that. I agree with everything else you say though. It's useful to know that some people don't work Fridays but do work Sundays, or some people have other customs.

Strange. I don't ever recall Sunday being used as the start of the week in the UK. I asked a few people here and they all said Monday. The two printed calendars I was able to find (a diary and a wallplanner) all use Monday. ISO 8601 also starts the week on Monday [1].

You are correct that the Wikipedia article I cited says that in the Judeo-Christian tradition the week starts on Sunday, but that is clearly for religious purposes. Since the UK is home to people of many religions and none, I'm not sure why you think that Sunday is normative.

Serious question: does it feel different if your week starts on Sunday? Do you feel like your week is bracketed by a non-work day at each end?

[1] http://www.npl.co.uk/science-technology/time-frequency/time/...

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#75

Post by bmckeough »

ngsayjoe wrote: post #35
davidw wrote: post #27

> 6. Country code top level domains give context However, pay attention to the fact that "top level domain" does not necessarily have anything to do with language. For instance, .it = Italian, right? Wrong. There are German and French language minorities here, amongst others. Other countries are even more confusing/problematic.

I hate it so much that linked in default to Malay every time I landed on its pages. No way to change it to English.

Is Linked In not honoring the Accept-Language header, or is your browser specifying Malay as Accept-Language?

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14...

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#76

Post by kibwen »

angersock wrote: post #67
icebraining wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.arpa didn't disappear, it changed its purpose.

Would you mind elaborating on this? I'm curious.

"The domain name arpa is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is used exclusively for technical infrastructure purposes. While the name originally was the acronym for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the funding organization in the United States that developed one of the precursors of the Internet (ARPANET), it now stands for Address and Routing Parameter Area."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.arpa

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#77

Post by mtoddh »

klodolph wrote: post #66
gsb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could buy a .com address years before the internet existed outside the US. The .com tld was created in 1984, at which point there had already been international links for over a decade, so that doesn't really support the argument.

I thought that the links, at the time, went mostly to other networks -- ones running X.25 or something.

X.25 - that is a blast from the past. I think JANET and Autonet had gateways where you could hop from one to the other (ie, TCP/IP to X.25).

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#78

Post by vacri »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #7

Good list, and interesting how at least half of the points are about localisation/internationalization. The date point was good I find that one very annoying. The easiest way to work it out on forums is usually to look at the previous post and see what number goes down (day). I didn't realise the mm/dd format was only officially used in two countries. I've never understood why it's use at all, it makes much more sens…

As long as it's ascending or descending in colloquial use, it's not a problem. The mess happens when the date is listed as mm/dd/yy.

If you're doing timestamps, it should be yy/mm/dd, because that then feeds into the continuation of the descent into hh/mm/ss

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#79

Post by vacri »

Tichy wrote: post #2

Why is nobody using the ISO format for dates? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 yyyy-mm-dd? Another benefit is that it sorts correctly in the file explorers (I used to name my photo folders like that...). Coming from a country where we typically do dd/mm I can never remember what the English standard is. I've taken to always writing the name of the month to be sure. Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be…

I've taken to always writing the name of the month to be sure.

Apparently the US military does this as well do avoid problems when liaising with other countries (01 JAN 1970)

Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be true? The author is Australian, and I'm wondering if his iphone data is national rather than international. The iphone here seems to have a bigger stranglehold than in the US, though that's merely my perception and I don't know the real numbers.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#80

Post by corford »

jp_sc wrote: post #57

> 6. Country code top level domains give context And are a pain to handle. .com - US$ 10 ~ - Many registar to choose (remember GoDaddy). .xx - US$ 40 ~ - Usually only one registar available, if you don't like it you're screwed - Usually the most hideous admin interface, sometimes only functional in IE

Just as an FYI (in case it's useful), I recently had to register 20+ country level tld variants of our .com address and after a lot of research the best outfit I found in terms of price, range of country level tlds offered, modern admin console etc. was http://www.gandi.net
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