Q&A content

Greetings all,

In trying to come up with Q&A content, I was trying to think of how to
appeal to a broader audience. In my opinion, the current questions were too
advanced, and I fear that they might scare away those that are just starting
to explore--or expand into--this area. After reading the previous emails, I
see that others have already been thinking that way. These are all great
questions! I think we could probably use a few even more elementary
questions as well. Below are a few of what I was thinking. Any thoughts?


1. Why are the benefits of adding international-friendly code?

    - quick overview of benefits 
    - demographics of "who" is using the web
    - quick mention of the markup languages,
      and how they work together (Unicode, XML, XHTML, etc.)
    - quick mention of internationalization and localization
    - long-term business benefits


2. What are the first steps in migrating an existing HTML-based site to an
international-friendly multilingual enabled XHTML site?

    - walk through a suggested process at a very basic level
      (including analyzing their business requirements and
      future business growth plans)
    - what skills and/or knowledge are needed 
      (refer to supplemental resources)
    - introduce some considerations to help decide 
      what's best for their site/product


3. What are the next steps...?

    - <this could be a "Part 2" to the above question>


4. Which web authoring applications can be used to create multilingual
XHTML?

    - <This is often very useful, but do we 
      want to cover this topic?>


5. What design & editorial considerations are there for multilingual sites?

    - discuss and give examples of:
       - current language indicator (& change selector)
       - country indicator (& change selector)
       - font software requirements
       - font treatments across different cultures
    - quick overview of cultural differences in:
      - time/date formats
      - punctuation
      - etc...
    - refer to supplemental internationalization resources 
      which discuss cultural concerns dealing with color,
      religion, etc.


Thanks,

Phil Arko
Siemens

Received on Friday, 6 June 2003 16:43:04 UTC