1545392 - add per-site language preferences and language selection UI to page info panel

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: Page Info Window, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Paul Wise]

There is a fundamental problem with using language content negotiation on the web these days: the user interface for it is hidden away in preference menus, which means that users never change it and it is completely inaccurate for most users, which means that most websites do not use it and now rely on guesses based on IP address geolocation instead, which means English users who travel are annoyed by those bad guesses.

This could be mitigated by browsers adding user-friendly language selection. If the language selection UI didn't work that would be bad of course. Luckily there is a header that is a good indicator that the website used language content negotiation, the Content-Language header. So displaying the UI could be gated on that header being present in the HTTP response headers.

An additional problem is that different websites might have different quality translations. There are probably other reasons that it is likely users probably have per-site language preferences, while the existing preference is browser-wide.

So I think the right place to add new user-friendly UI for this is in the site info panel.

Comment 1

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Assuming you don't mean the site identity panel but the "Page Info" window (it's a bit confusing), moving this to the right component.

I think this is a valid idea, but I don't see anyone prioritizing it right now. Maybe I'm wrong.

Comment 2

[Paul Wise]

I mean the panel you get when you click the (i) icon next to the URL and the lock icon that is on https sites. I assumed that was called the Site Identity and Permission Panels. The Page Info window is a bit too obscure for most users to know it exists.

Comment 3

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Oh, well, then that's a WONTFIX, sorry. You were right in your assumption, but the identity panel is reserved for info on security/privacy related matters.

Comment 4

[Paul Wise]

Interesting, is there any writeup about this policy? Seems strange to restrict it like that.

Comment 5

[Paul Wise]

Also, the per-site functionality could be useful even if the site panel isn't where the UI for it is going to be exposed. So I'm fine with moving the issue back to the page info window and removing wontfix.

Comment 6

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Alright, back to Page Info then.

It's not really a policy and there's no write-up about it, it's simply a user experience decision that the maintainers of this panel are making based on their own judgement. :)