50 ideas for the new catonmat.net website

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Crawford Permalink
December 11, 2009, 00:12

#34: If you wind up doing this, you should look into using the accept-language HTTP header to attempt to figure out what language the user wants. Maybe have a bar at the top of the page with a well-written (i.e. reviewed by a human fluent in the language) suggestion along the lines of "This page is written in English but it looks like you prefer [[language]]. Google Translate might help you understand it better." I'm not sure how different browser/language combinations handle their accept-language header - all I can say for sure is that Firefox knows I speak English.

Another interesting idea might be to consider the language of the referrer (probably by TLD: .es suggests Spanish, .jp suggests Japanese, etc.). Well-known things like Spanish-language Google search results would be pretty easy to tackle, I think.

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