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Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

geyer.dev

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Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#51

Post by bdhcuidbebe »

tyre wrote: post #43
bdhcuidbebe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Then of course the multitude of languages spoken in many european languages such as Spain (catalan, gallician, basque). Or the latin american variation. Or what about Switzerland who dont have their own language (they speak french, german, italian and romanch). Even your example of Swed…

If someone see's the spanish flag on a language learning site, they're going to know it's spanish. No one looks at that and think, "hmm, no, I don't want to learn basque." It may be technically correct , but it's pretty obvious to people what it means. It's extremely common.

Its only being reinforced due to this kind of dumb presentation.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#52

Post by ludwik »

bdhcuidbebe wrote: post #37
Alex-Programs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I develop a language learning tool that uses flags for languages extensively. I know that they have flaws. The problem is, there isn't any better pictorial representation, and they work well enough that it's better than not having one. For some languages they work very well (e.g. Swedish), for others there may technically be ambiguity but it's clear enough (e.g. the Union Jack for English), and some are more difficul…

Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Then of course the multitude of languages spoken in many european languages such as Spain (catalan, gallician, basque). Or the latin american variation. Or what about Switzerland who dont have their own language (they speak french, german, italian and romanch). Even your example of Swed…

I don't think anybody claims that it is not a flawed idea. From what I understand from this thread, people who use flags to represent languages fully acknowledge that it is a flawed idea - the problem is that they lack an alternative solution in some contexts (for example, those that require high information density).

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#53

Post by bdhcuidbebe »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #45
bdhcuidbebe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Then of course the multitude of languages spoken in many european languages such as Spain (catalan, gallician, basque). Or the latin american variation. Or what about Switzerland who dont have their own language (they speak french, german, italian and romanch). Even your example of Swed…

Give me one example of a website that supports, let's say, three of the 20+ Indian languages, Catalan, Galician, Basque, Swiss French, Swiss German, Swiss Italian, and Romansh. You will have a hard time, even on Wikipedia. For most people, flags absolutely are the best shorthand for the language of the same name.

wikipedia, google translate

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#54

Post by andix »

Arbortheus wrote: post #3

Dumb decision from Microsoft. Will they remove country borders from Bing Maps because they might be considered political too?

It’s the reality of doing business all around the world.

Either you chose sides, create different releases of software for some countries (deployment nightmare), or just remove such „sensitive“ features.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#55

Post by troad »

tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

I feel obliged to point out that while flags do not represent languages perfectly, there is no good, user-facing symbolic alternative for languages.

No, people don't know the ISO codes for their languages.

No, you can't use the full name, since some languages have very long names.

No, a single 'languages' icon isn't enough, you often need to symbolically represent individual languages.

For the most common languages, flags are fine.

Edit: I'm amused by the amount of replies that assume the only context that ever requires symbolic language representation is websites. Awesome, how do I add one of your JavaScript language drop-downs to a physical product label? Or an airline steward's name tag?

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#56

Post by bdhcuidbebe »

cco wrote: post #46
bdhcuidbebe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Then of course the multitude of languages spoken in many european languages such as Spain (catalan, gallician, basque). Or the latin american variation. Or what about Switzerland who dont have their own language (they speak french, german, italian and romanch). Even your example of Swed…

In your experience, what's the better option for an iconographic representation?

Not using icon, but using names

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#57

Post by hiccuphippo »

tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

Should there be emojis to represent languages? Maybe it could be a new group. I'd rather not use the flag shape, maybe a circle with the 2 letter code and a background with the colors from the flag usually used to represent that language, mainly because people is already used to scan the lists looking for those colors.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#59

Post by rrr_oh_man »

slater wrote: post #44
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages Says who? Probably not the actual users of websites, I'd wager.

Say people from countries with multiple languages. E.g., Switzerland has four official languages, none of which are English. Also, UX/UI designers have rightfully been banging the "don't use country flags to indicate languages" drum for literally decades, now. We dealt with this issue in the 90s.

That's fine for Switzerland. And I get the India case.

But why does it have to concern some Finnish online store that also has English and Swedish as options? Do their actual users really care? Because that is the litmus test, not the opinion of someone writing a blog.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#60

Post by andix »

int_19h wrote: post #13
jey wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not too far from the truth -- most mapping services render political boundaries differently based on where you're accessing the site from.

Or just refuse to commit. E.g. Google Maps, to this day, will not show the country for any Crimean city when you click on it to bring up its info panel. If you do this with e.g. Kherson, you get "Kherson, Kherson Oblast, Ukraine". But if you do it with Sevastopol, you only get the city name, not the region & country. It also shows dotted borders between Crimea and both Russia and Ukraine.

Isn’t Google Maps blocked in Russia anyway? Crimea is a different story, as many countries recognize it to be in some kind of limbo and treat it as neither Russian nor Ukrainian.

I think Yandex (Russian Google) removed borders completely from their maps. Also because it’s impossible to figure out where the Russian government would like them to be. Might change on a daily basis.

Google maps added the „gulf of America“ to their US version, because anywhere else it’s still the Gulf of Mexico (even in iOS autocorrect, it changed it correctly to uppercase).

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