Hi Matthias
>a) Should the url for a document in different languages be the same or
>different, ie "document.html/sida.html" vs
>"document.html?langID=1/document.html?langID=2" I'm leaning towards the
>second alternative since it's easier to manage but I could be
>wrong on this.
I think document.html?langID=1 is plain ugly and the usability is none. See
J. Nielsen:
Jakob Nielsen, "Designing Web Usability" [p.248]
------------------------------------------------
Our usability studies have shown that users rely on reading URLs when they
try to decipher the structure of a site or the possible results of following
a hyperlink. It would be preferable if browsers had better ways of making
site structures explicit and of previewing the destination of hyperlinks,
but right now they don't, so users read URLs the way the ancients read
cracked turtle shells: to divine a hostile environment with no known laws of
nature.
Because we know that users try to understand URL's, we have an obligation to
make them understandable. In particular, all directory names should be
human-readable and should be either words or compound words that explain the
meaning of the site structure. Also, your site structure should support
URL-butchering where users hack off trailing parts of an URL in the hope of
getting to an overview page at a higher place in the site hierarchy. Of
course, it is better if users can navigate your site structure using your
navigation buttons, but we know that a lot of users use URL-butchering as a
shortcut: Such users should get reasonable results (typically a
table-of-contents-like page listing the information available at the desired
level of hierarchy).
I think a viable way is /en/prevention/aids.html and
/fr/prevention/aids.html
or if you want to change the URI too en/prevention/aids.html and
/fr/prevention/sida.html
>
>b) documents resides in a separate directory for each language , but should
>the filenames for the different pages be the same or different? (my system
>is built so that actual url of a page and documents are separated)
>Personally I think it makes the most sense to have all the filenames in say
>english but one could go the other way and have the filenames in each
>language, I'm not sure of the cons and pros of this...
I think a better solution is to have an internal object, let's say:
document and then have articles in different languages like
document:aids
article:(en)aids
article:(fr)sida
article:(de)aids
...
This makes all the handling far more easier. Otherwise multiple languages
become just a nightmare IMHO.
>Are there any other issues to keep in mind when doing multi-language sites?
>
There are too many to list quickly.
one being:
- rather UTF-8 than iso-8859-1
Best
Roger
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