language changes in title tag

[atu]

Hi,
It could be useful to insert the <bdo> tag in the <title> tag for including a title in more than one language. Screen reader users could profit from this. Example:

Code: Select all

<title>English
    <bdo lang="fr" dir="ltr">Français</bdo>
    <bdo lang="de" dir="ltr">Deutsch</bdo>
</title>

[zcorpan]

This wouldn't work in text/html for parsing legacy reasons. You'd end up with the literal text "<bdo..." in the title, just like if you had written "&lt;bdo..."

[Le Sage]

Well, you could do that dynamically with a simple server technology as JSP or PHP. It's way harder that dynamically change any element value with JavaScript regarding the browser defined language, simply because as far as I know, the language is defined in the HTTP request, but can't really be accessed through JavaScript.

[skitch]

If you're using the server to decide to give it HTML 5 or backwards-compatible HTML and the server has the language, then the server can output the correct title without JS or HTML helping.

[ktf]

This wouldn't work in text/html for parsing legacy reasons. You'd end up with the literal text "<bdo..." in the title, just like if you had written "&lt;bdo..."

Well, of course, but isn't it possible to build in HTML5, so that you can use it if about 98% of the users use it? Then the webmaster can decide whether to use it or not.

[zcorpan]

Well, of course, but isn't it possible to build in HTML5, so that you can use it if about 98% of the users use it? Then the webmaster can decide whether to use it or not.

I don't follow...

[Le Sage]

If you're using the server to decide to give it HTML 5 or backwards-compatible HTML and the server has the language, then the server can output the correct title without JS or HTML helping.

That's what I said when I spoke of PHP or JSP.

Well, of course, but isn't it possible to build in HTML5, so that you can use it if about 98% of the users use it? Then the webmaster can decide whether to use it or not.

I guess you might mean that most webmaster don't have the possibility (or the knowledge) to use server-side dynamic webpages. Well, as zcorpan said, atu's solution can't be used because the title element can only contain pure text. & since JavaScript can't (as far as I know) detect the browser language, I'm afraid it's not possible to change dynamically any element according to the browser language, without any user action (like "please select your prefered language").

[ktf]

because the title element can only contain pure text

Ah, now I understand Than it's indeed backwards incompatible.

[Le Sage]

I guess you could try to parse (using an AJAX engine as jQuery is suggested here) the navigator.appVersion string data to detect the browser language (should be working on every browser, although less clean than using :
navigator.browserLanguage (IE & Opera, no FF)
or
navigator.systemLanguage (IE, no Opera or FF)
or
navigator.userLanguage (IE & Opera, no FF)
& then on the onload of your body, you could dynamically change the value of your title with JavaScript. That's the best I can suggest for now. (I'll do something like that on my webpage some day...
That's not a very good tweak, as it won't be able to read the user favorite language setting (in Firefox for example).
for the DOM navigator variable, see here : http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?f ... _navigator
By the way, does anyone have any idea why FF doesn't support browser language detection ? I don't see any security flaw here, as the language is sent in the HTTP header.

[OmegaJunior]

Off topic: It seems silly and unlikely that Firefox wouldn't be able to detect the user's language settings for the browser. Opera, Internet Explorer, and Firefox all allow the user to set their preferred web page language (and create new ones on the spot, too). The only competitive Windows browser that doesn't allow that (at least not easily) is Apple's Safari. Which is silly.

[Le Sage]

They are able to do it, but a webpage needs JavaScript to have a function for the web developper to be able to use it in its webpage. (or, once again, use dynamic webpages as PHP or JSP)