Re: [WAI-IG] Serving my page in the right language

> An URL to a web page should be a uniform resource locator serving the
> same content to all people, what is served should not depend on the
> browser or user agent people use.

What is served should depend on the user.

> It is bad practice to use the HTTP Accept-Language header as a code fork
> for what an URL should mean.

It is *extremely* good practice to use the HTTP Accept-Language header to choose
amongst different representations of the same resource identified by the URI.
The only times you shouldn't do this are:

1. You don't have a translation available (which unfortunately is most of the
time for most resources).

2. A user has explicitly picked a language (e.g. You might want the original enm
version of a piece by Chaucer rather an en translation, or you might want the
en version of a W3C document since it is the normative in the case of a
difference between it and a translation).

Of course it's important to set the Vary header as well.

-- 
Jon Hanna
<http://www.hackcraft.net/>
"…it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for
equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt

Received on Tuesday, 16 March 2004 09:30:19 UTC