RE: Web page layouts in different cultures - question from DIWG

For the record, some comments I made in response to Rotan's initial private
mail to myself:

One thing I would note is that Arabic and Hebrew pages are often mirrored
left to right. Compare, for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/news/
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/news/

Vertically laid out text is still difficult to achieve, since the support
will come in CSS3, so that may become more prevalent later.  For an example
of a vertical page in Mongolian (which doesn't really work that well, but
may give you some ideas), see http://www.mondlib.com/index2.htm.  Mongolian
is naturally vertical in orientation, whereas Chinese, Japanese and Korean
can be read equally well horizontally. (This doesn't necessarily mean that
we should force them to write horizontally, of course.) Note that vertical
Mongolian text lines progress from left to right, the opposite of CJK.

RI


============
Richard Ishida
W3C

contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ 

W3C Internationalization:
http://www.w3.org/International/ 

Publication blog:
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Rotan Hanrahan
> Sent: 19 September 2005 11:49
> To: www-international@w3.org
> Cc: www-di@w3.org
> Subject: Web page layouts in different cultures - question from DIWG
> 
> 
> At a recent meeting of the Device Independence Working Group 
> (W3C-DIWG) we discussed the issue of page layouts, and how to 
> represent/process them when adapting content for different 
> devices. Our perception of page layouts is based mostly on 
> our Western experience of such pages, as such people are in 
> the majority in our group. Typically: logo and ads on the 
> top, navigation down the left, copyright at the bottom, 
> scrolling the page is vertical etc...
> 
> However, we were concerned that such layouts may not be 
> representative of the non-Western world. I am seeking 
> references to information about this topic. If it turns out 
> that the Western ideas of page layouts are broadly compatible 
> with the ideas of page layout around the world, then there is 
> no issue for us to worry about.
> 
> (For immediate response from DI to any relevant ideas on this 
> issue, please email the www-di public mailing list.)
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> ---Rotan Hanrahan (member DI, chair DD, ACRep MobileAware)
>

Received on Thursday, 22 September 2005 12:23:12 UTC