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Accept my accept-language

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11–20 of 76 posts

Re: Accept my accept-language

#11

Post by mrweasel »

raving-richard wrote: post #7

Google is^H^Hwas* really bloody annoying when it comes to this. English (en-us and en) is the only language in my accept header. When I lived in Geneva though, Google always used to serve me pages in German (presumably Swiss-German). Gee, that's logical. (Geneva is a mainly French speaking city, though over 40% of the population is non-Swiss.) Where I live now is another French speaking area. I just checked and it se…

Google has become worse when it comes to language detection. I often get Brazilian Portuguese on Google Analytics, I'm in Denmark. I believe one of by co-worker often got Russian.

Re: Accept my accept-language

#12

Post by epsylon »

bhrgunatha wrote: post #5
jtokoph wrote: post #2

> 1. the default quality value is being parsed wrong, and English is being assigned q=0 instead of q=1 or > 2. en-US doesn't match en and is being bypassed Or: 3. They are simply checking your IP address and not looking at your header at all.

This is what so many websites do now. It causes me constant aggravation. It's nothing to do with your browser settings. They infer your language from your IP address, and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. However for me it isn't. I really really wish there was a way to configure your browser to force websites to accept your language settings. The only other option is to enable cookies so that the website…

> and for most cases that IS the right thing to do.

The problem is that for a large minority of people this is absolutely catastrophic. Think of the Western business traveller going to Japan or China...

Re: Accept my accept-language

#13

Post by darklajid »

My accept header only contains en-US and en. I tend to get served German content (and Google's especially bad about this).

Please, I hope someone hears your complains and starts fixing things. That issue is highly annoying..

Re: Accept my accept-language

#14

Post by bhrgunatha »

epsylon wrote: post #12
bhrgunatha wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what so many websites do now. It causes me constant aggravation. It's nothing to do with your browser settings. They infer your language from your IP address, and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. However for me it isn't. I really really wish there was a way to configure your browser to force websites to accept your language settings. The only other option is to enable cookies so that the website…

> and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. The problem is that for a large minority of people this is absolutely catastrophic. Think of the Western business traveller going to Japan or China...

You're preaching to the choir, I'm in the suffering minority; that's is my problem exactly. I was just pre-empting the usual replies. Every time the subject comes up, people always respond with "Most people can't configure their browsers correctly" and "these websites do extensive testing and for most visitors they are right".

Re: Accept my accept-language

#15

Post by hrktb »

bhrgunatha wrote: post #5
jtokoph wrote: post #2

> 1. the default quality value is being parsed wrong, and English is being assigned q=0 instead of q=1 or > 2. en-US doesn't match en and is being bypassed Or: 3. They are simply checking your IP address and not looking at your header at all.

This is what so many websites do now. It causes me constant aggravation. It's nothing to do with your browser settings. They infer your language from your IP address, and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. However for me it isn't. I really really wish there was a way to configure your browser to force websites to accept your language settings. The only other option is to enable cookies so that the website…

Very minor point: the right thing to do is to not infer the language, specially not from the IP, if no explicit information is available. You shoukd make the user choose or take him/her to the default language (there should be an obvious way to change the language from there anyway)

If you have multiple language, hopefully you already have a scheme to differentiate the language (i.e. wikipedia has the language in the URL). If the user went to a specific language URL you should ignore the other settings.

If he/she didn't go directly to a specific language, it's fair to assume he/she is in a non standard situation or is OK with the defaults, and applying heuristics doesn't help.

Re: Accept my accept-language

#16

Post by seszett »

epsylon wrote: post #12
bhrgunatha wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what so many websites do now. It causes me constant aggravation. It's nothing to do with your browser settings. They infer your language from your IP address, and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. However for me it isn't. I really really wish there was a way to configure your browser to force websites to accept your language settings. The only other option is to enable cookies so that the website…

> and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. The problem is that for a large minority of people this is absolutely catastrophic. Think of the Western business traveller going to Japan or China...

Not just travelers. What content do you serve to people with an IP from Belgium? Switzerland? Canada?

Re: Accept my accept-language

#17

Post by pytrin »

Those sites are not relying on accept-language, but rather on IP geolocation to select the default language. I sometimes use a non-US proxy when I'm feeling vigilant, and Google always uses the IP of the proxy to determine what language to serve me (even though my browser accept-language hasn't changed).

Re: Accept my accept-language

#18

Post by ZirconCode »

darklajid wrote: post #13

My accept header only contains en-US and en. I tend to get served German content (and Google's especially bad about this). Please, I hope someone hears your complains and starts fixing things. That issue is highly annoying..

This. I travel a lot, I've had this happen too often. Sometimes they even lock payment methods based on where you are, it's horrible.

Re: Accept my accept-language

#19

Post by [deleted] »

epsylon wrote: post #12
bhrgunatha wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what so many websites do now. It causes me constant aggravation. It's nothing to do with your browser settings. They infer your language from your IP address, and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. However for me it isn't. I really really wish there was a way to configure your browser to force websites to accept your language settings. The only other option is to enable cookies so that the website…

> and for most cases that IS the right thing to do. The problem is that for a large minority of people this is absolutely catastrophic. Think of the Western business traveller going to Japan or China...

[deleted]

Re: Accept my accept-language

#20

Post by tazjin »

raving-richard wrote: post #7

Google is^H^Hwas* really bloody annoying when it comes to this. English (en-us and en) is the only language in my accept header. When I lived in Geneva though, Google always used to serve me pages in German (presumably Swiss-German). Gee, that's logical. (Geneva is a mainly French speaking city, though over 40% of the population is non-Swiss.) Where I live now is another French speaking area. I just checked and it se…

My accept-language header only has en_GB and en in it. Google still randomly serves me pages in Swedish and German (which are both languages I speak, but which I both explicitly disabled in my Google account settings).

The best case of this was when they launched the preview for the new Google Maps version - there was a landing page with some information and a button in the middle. This page was served to me in three languages at the same time (the header, the button and the info text) - presumably served by different internal components that all handle languages differently.

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