Closed Bug 753585 Opened 12 years ago Closed 9 years ago

Determine best UI for page language selector in Kuma

Categories

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Editing, defect)

x86
macOS
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: aspivak, Unassigned)

References

Details

Need to determine the best UI for selecting page translations (dropdown with all possibly languages, only show what is already translated, or ?). 

Work with Jean-Yves, Craig and the international community to figure out the best approach.
See also bug 672668 (for the front page, we should find a consistent solution)

I would prefer a clearly visible list of what is already translated (like on Wikipedia).

Currently, the links are rather hidden by using the dropdown in the small navigation bar. The translated articles do not get much attention and most people don't know that there is a version in their language.

I think getting more visibility to our translated articles could lead to more l10n contributions.

I could imagine to put such a list in a box like the table of contents and place it above or under the TOC.
My opinion is: Display only languages that are already translated. Do not display all possible languages as, as a user, I don't want to go to an empty page. Also a user will very unlikely change the language, so it must be accessible but not be too visible as we don't call for an action about it.

Eventually add a link "Help us translate in another language" too so that people may want to join us.

From the l10n viewpoint, there are two ways of starting a translation:
1) You follow a link in your language to an empty page and you create it. (Now easy)
2) You decide to translate and you start from the English page. (Now painful as the name of the page is not the same and the links are complex to do)

For the visual way of doing this: the options (a drop-box, a menu item or a list à la Wikipedia) are not a big deal. Note I don't like the aqua button I see on some page (too aggressive) and the list doesn't scale with short pages and a lot of languages (or on mobile).

Also the amount of locales is potentially huge. Small communities may be interested in translating specific portions of the MDN: I expect to have at least 15 languages (en, fr, de, it, ru, pl, jp, cn (2x), kr, tr, es, pt, ar, nl, ...) and potentially much more (50?).
Thanks for providing feedback guys! :)

My instinct is to use the dropdown style that MindTouch currently uses because:

1.  It's right on the top of the page, so you don't need to dig to find it.
2.  It takes up very little space

Having another box on the right side by the table of contents isn't a bad idea, but I fear:

1.  On pages like this (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/Media_queries), the user would need to scroll a ways before they saw where the translation options were
2.  In many cases, the sidebar could start taking up a lot of unecessary space; space that's now hidden in a dropdown.

Let me know your thoughts!
Personally I like very much the MindTouch menu for this feature. :-)
I also like the current Mindtouch dropdown and placement (if the listed translations were consistent across the different languages). Would be great if we could add a "Translate this Page" link in either the languages or this page dropdowns that would let the user start a translation.
Version: Kuma → unspecified
Component: Docs Platform → Editing
They are kicking off a cross-site project in Mozilla.org to come up with a Mozilla-wide solution to the language selector. We should dupe this bug to that one...
Flags: needinfo?(hhabstritt.bugzilla)
bumping....
Flags: needinfo?(hhabstritt.bugzilla)
Anybody?
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 9 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Product: developer.mozilla.org → developer.mozilla.org Graveyard
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