Free Flag Icons • Hacker News Board

Re: Free Flag Icons

#31

Post by rhplus » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:15 PM UTC

A bit of advice: avoid using flags altogether in your user interface unless you really, really need to refer to specific national/political entities. There's far too much room for error or offense, whether you're incorrectly assigning the wrong flag to a geographical region or have not represented the flag correctly. I haven't looked at the flag set, but I'm betting there are errors related to the correctness of layout, aspect ratios and colors and to the clarity of symbols and text.

Even more importantly, never use a flag to represent a language choice.

(* most major websites do avoid using flags, but one notable exception is Apple, which completely corrupts every single flag with their own shiny style: http://www.apple.com/choose-your-country/ ...)

Re: Free Flag Icons

#32

Post by hendi_ » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:20 PM UTC

hp wrote: post #28

Using flags in your visual design can be tempting but in my experience it's a bad idea. The problem is that certain flags force you to "take sides" in political disputes that you likely aren't aware of and don't understand. You'll inadvertently make one side very angry with you, and you won't even really know what political statement you accidentally made. It's OK if you stick to flags you know but if you start tryin…

And even worse is using them to indicate languages. There are countries with more than one language (e.g. Belgium which Dutch, French and German) and there are languages which are used in more than one country (think us.png vs gb.png for "English").

So, rule of thumb: - never use flags to indicate a language - use flags to indicate a country only after thinking twice

EDIT: Nonetheless, this flag collection looks awesome, and if I ever have a legit use case for flags in a GUI I'll definitely use them. Thanks for sharing under a free license!

Re: Free Flag Icons

#33

Post by visualidiot » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:22 PM UTC

rhplus wrote: post #31

A bit of advice: avoid using flags altogether in your user interface unless you really, really need to refer to specific national/political entities. There's far too much room for error or offense, whether you're incorrectly assigning the wrong flag to a geographical region or have not represented the flag correctly. I haven't looked at the flag set, but I'm betting there are errors related to the correctness of layo…

A bit of advice: actually look at something before judging it. If you'd downloaded, you'd know that they all look correct.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#34

Post by jenius » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:27 PM UTC

visualidiot wrote: post #33

rhplus wrote: post #31

A bit of advice: avoid using flags altogether in your user interface unless you really, really need to refer to specific national/political entities. There's far too much room for error or offense, whether you're incorrectly assigning the wrong flag to a geographical region or have not represented the flag correctly. I haven't looked at the flag set, but I'm betting there are errors related to the correctness of layo…

A bit of advice: actually look at something before judging it. If you'd downloaded, you'd know that they all look correct.

+100 on this comment

Re: Free Flag Icons

#35

Post by rhplus » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:42 PM UTC

visualidiot wrote: post #33

rhplus wrote: post #31

A bit of advice: avoid using flags altogether in your user interface unless you really, really need to refer to specific national/political entities. There's far too much room for error or offense, whether you're incorrectly assigning the wrong flag to a geographical region or have not represented the flag correctly. I haven't looked at the flag set, but I'm betting there are errors related to the correctness of layo…

A bit of advice: actually look at something before judging it. If you'd downloaded, you'd know that they all look correct.

You're completely missing my point. I'm recommending against using flags at all, correct or otherwise. It's just too much of a sensitive issue for many users.

And to your point about correctness: there are specific issues such as illegible text in the Saudi flag and general issues such as the use or gradients or borders throughout.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#36

Post by Xion » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:48 PM UTC

hendi_ wrote: post #32

hp wrote: post #28

Using flags in your visual design can be tempting but in my experience it's a bad idea. The problem is that certain flags force you to "take sides" in political disputes that you likely aren't aware of and don't understand. You'll inadvertently make one side very angry with you, and you won't even really know what political statement you accidentally made. It's OK if you stick to flags you know but if you start tryin…

And even worse is using them to indicate languages. There are countries with more than one language (e.g. Belgium which Dutch, French and German) and there are languages which are used in more than one country (think us.png vs gb.png for "English"). So, rule of thumb: - never use flags to indicate a language - use flags to indicate a country only after thinking twice EDIT: Nonetheless, this flag collection looks awes…

How do you indicate a language in icon-like manner then? Is using the textual ISO codes the only safe option?

Re: Free Flag Icons

#37

Post by pjriot » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:50 PM UTC

cheeaun wrote: post #16

I think it would be awesome if all these flag icons are hosted on a CDN and we can all link to it.

That's a disturbing sense of entitlement. The creators spent 100+ hours on this work and you're asking them to cover the bandwidth costs of hosting it for you?

Re: Free Flag Icons

#38

Post by Xion » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

pjriot wrote: post #37

cheeaun wrote: post #16

I think it would be awesome if all these flag icons are hosted on a CDN and we can all link to it.

That's a disturbing sense of entitlement. The creators spent 100+ hours on this work and you're asking them to cover the bandwidth costs of hosting it for you?

Eh, I don't think (s)he meant authors should do that. I suppose it's only an idea, shared here with hopes that maybe some HNer will pick it up.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#39

Post by pjriot » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 3:08 PM UTC

Xion wrote: post #38

pjriot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a disturbing sense of entitlement. The creators spent 100+ hours on this work and you're asking them to cover the bandwidth costs of hosting it for you?

Eh, I don't think (s)he meant authors should do that. I suppose it's only an idea, shared here with hopes that maybe some HNer will pick it up.

Fair enough. I must just be grumpy this morning.

Re: Free Flag Icons

#40

Post by hendi_ » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 3:19 PM UTC

Xion wrote: post #36

hendi_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even worse is using them to indicate languages. There are countries with more than one language (e.g. Belgium which Dutch, French and German) and there are languages which are used in more than one country (think us.png vs gb.png for "English"). So, rule of thumb: - never use flags to indicate a language - use flags to indicate a country only after thinking twice EDIT: Nonetheless, this flag collection looks awes…

How do you indicate a language in icon-like manner then? Is using the textual ISO codes the only safe option?

It depends.

First of all, flags are really bad for languages since there's an n:m relationship. Which flag would you use for "English"? The USA flag? The Flag of England? The Union Jack?

If you offer only "English" then depending on if you write "center" or "centre" you may offend either USA or British people. Same for "German", where a Swiss may be offended to see "Straße" while a German could be offended by seeing "Strasse". Of course most people won't care about that and I bet most Brits are used to see "color" without a 'u' on the internet, but from experience I can say that there are people who care about or even get offended by that.

But even if using textual representation for languages like "English" is not perfect, offering every language-country possibility (en-US, en-GB, en-??...) isn't a viable route in most cases since there are way to many combinations.

Just think of yourself (assuming you're from the USA): would you rather see the word "English" in a language selector or the Flag of England?

So what should you do? I'd suggest going with textual representations like "English" or the ISO 639-x shortcodes ("en" or "eng"). Being German that's easy to say for me, and I know a handful of people who'd like me to distinguish between de_DE, de_AT and de_CH.

So as I've said: it depends :-)