Internationalization in web applications

Last night I got an email from Apple with an invitation to take part in an Apple Store Survey. This mail and the related questionnaire again made me aware how important proper internationalisation (i18n) is. The survey itself was in German language, but the translation was somehow »bumpy«. Especially the footer was funny:

partial Apple Store Feedback Form

The button says »pass« – and that’s all. I expected something like »Submit your feedback« or »Submit now«. Of course it’s the only button in this form so one can imagine what it’s for. But nevertheless the usability suffers from this little bug.

WordPress 1.5 (updated)

I upgraded my blogging software to the latest release – now I use WordPress 1.5 »Strayhorn«. The upgrade was easy – there’s a good tutorial in the WP Wiki.

Since the system now makes use of Themes to extend the Templates the old design of my site is gone until I find some time to replace the default theme with my custom one.

Update: Since it is so easy to set up a basic theme, the site now looks like in WordPress 1.2 days.