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Lessons for uncultured web developers

troyhunt.com

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Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#101

Post by billswift »

DanBC wrote: post #71

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 pref…

>The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

- - Andrew S. Tanenbaum

I wonder if he still thinks saying that was a good idea.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#103

Post by Semiapies »

patdennis wrote: post #53
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…

The fact that the US doesn't use its country TLD is analogous to the way that the UK doesn't have to specify their country name on their postage stamps. You get certain privileges for pioneering the development of a communications system, I guess.

Also, the sheer PITA nature of the .us domain, early on, when it was hard to get a .us address if you weren't a state or municipal government.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#104

Post by TillE »

togasystems wrote: post #90

Concerning timezones, is there any viable way to get the user's timezone? Javascript only?

Most sites require manual entry of the timezone; I've seen very few that bother to detect it. Javascript seems to be a good option, though it doesn't exactly get you the timezone, just the current offset from UTC.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#105

Post by drbawb »

TillE wrote: post #104
togasystems wrote: post #90

Concerning timezones, is there any viable way to get the user's timezone? Javascript only?

Most sites require manual entry of the timezone; I've seen very few that bother to detect it. Javascript seems to be a good option, though it doesn't exactly get you the timezone, just the current offset from UTC.

>just the current offset from UTC.

Never gave it a second thought, but this actually explains a lot.

DST, of course, shifts the offset by 1 hour, and I've often noticed that sites mis-detect my timezone by an hour with startling regularity.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#106

Post by troyhunt »

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…

Given the web is credited as being created by a Brit in Switzerland, I think we can all agree that both its origins and its intent are international in nature.

Given that uncultured in this context is about lack of awareness of cultures beyond their own, your definition seems consistent with mine.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#107

Post by cageface »

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…

Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be true?

He explains in the text that this depends entirely on the target market. In some countries the iPhone utterly dominates and in others it's down in the baseline.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#108

Post by mistercow »

>(I’d love to hear insight on why there’s no .us on these).

It's not difficult to understand. If you're targeting a mainstream demographic in the US, then any domain name that isn't a .com is basically worthless. Among the non-tech-savvy, many will not even recognize "example.us" as a URL, and even the tech-savvy will sometimes forget and type "example.com", which means that you need to buy the .com as well.

So buying the .us domain in addition is basically just paying $4/year so that you don't look Americentric... in the rare case that somebody even notices.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#109

Post by olliesaunders »

soren_dahl wrote: post #44
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…

True, though .uk is more correct (Great Britain doesn't include Northern Ireland) and is reserved by the United Kingdom in ISO 3166

Also, as a citizen of the UK, I really like any move away from the whole "great" in Great Britain. It makes us sound like we’re run by Hafez Aladeen from The Dictator or something.

Re: Lessons for uncultured web developers

#110

Post by notJim »

marme wrote: post #4

Qihoo’s 360 browser is not a full browser it behaves like an addon to IE. It will use the IE kernel of whatever version is installed on the users machine. So if the user still has IE6 it will render pages with the IE6 kernel. You dont really need to pay attention to it as a web developer you just need to know that if it the page displays correctly in IE6 then it should display correctly for a user Qihoo’s 360 browser…

Supposedly the browser will switch the rendering engine on you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qihoo.
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