
Lessons for uncultured web developers - troyhunt
http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/09/10-lessons-for-uncultured-web-developers.html
======
klodolph
> Why are these US only? It’s a conundrum which we probably don’t regularly
> need to worry about, but it’s unusual all the same (I’d love to hear insight
> on why there’s no .us on these).

History of the internet: it was invented as a US department of defense
research project, and grew into the beast it is today. You could buy a .com
address years before the internet existed outside the US. Note that .uk exists
for the same reason -- it should be .gb, which is the country code, but the UK
had already been naming everything with "uk" internally.

So the .edu, .mil, .gov, and .uk got grandfathered in. Others disappeared:
ARPA, NATO, Czechoslovakia. People can still register .su domains, if they
like -- that's the country code for the Soviet Union.

Once a TLD sees enough use, there's no real way to get rid of it.

~~~
earnubs
True, though .uk is more correct (Great Britain doesn't include Northern
Ireland) and is reserved by the United Kingdom in ISO 3166

~~~
toyg
I'd agree if it weren't for the confusion it generates, as ISO country codes
GB/GBR counter-intuitively don't map to a TLD.

Also, Ukraine got shafted into another mismatch (UA is TLD and ISO alpha-2,
UKR is alpha-3), although in their case one could say the country wasn't
around when ISO codes were formulated. Some Linux distributions used to have a
UK keymap which was... ukrainian. That was a lot of fun to fix (not).

------
andyjohnson0
Another lesson that might be useful is not to assume that the week starts on a
particular day.

I live in the UK and the general convention here is the the week on Monday. In
find calendars (presumably designed in the US) that start on Sunday
particularly frustrating and error-prone. Not being able to customise this is
uncultured.

Different cultures have different conventions, and if a seven-day week is the
norm then it start on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday [1]. And, of course, some
cultures don't use a seven-day week.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#N...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#Numbered_days_of_the_week)

~~~
DanBC
> I live in the UK and the general convention here is the the week on Monday.

Uh, no. The work week starts on Monday, but the week starts on Sunday. The
link you provide supports that.

I agree with everything else you say though. It's useful to know that some
people don't work Fridays but do work Sundays, or some people have other
customs.

~~~
andyjohnson0
Strange. I don't ever recall Sunday being used as the start of the week in the
UK. I asked a few people here and they all said Monday. The two printed
calendars I was able to find (a diary and a wallplanner) all use Monday. ISO
8601 also starts the week on Monday [1].

You are correct that the Wikipedia article I cited says that in the Judeo-
Christian tradition the week starts on Sunday, but that is clearly for
religious purposes. Since the UK is home to people of many religions and none,
I'm not sure why you think that Sunday is normative.

Serious question: does it _feel_ different if your week starts on Sunday? Do
you _feel_ like your week is bracketed by a non-work day at each end?

[1] [http://www.npl.co.uk/science-technology/time-
frequency/time/...](http://www.npl.co.uk/science-technology/time-
frequency/time/faqs/which-is-the-first-day-of-the-week-and-which-is-week-1-of-
the-year-\(faq-time\))

~~~
antidoh
I've tried to set up my calendars to start on Monday, over the years. It makes
sense, because the two major segments of my life, the work week and the
weekend, are each displayed contiguously.

And yet I get confused. Probably because I've grown up with Sunday to Saturday
calendars, and almost no one else does a Monday start calendar in the US.

And while thinking about this post, I wondered, would it make sense to display
calendars with both? An eight day display, showing last Sunday, this week, and
the coming weekend.

------
k-mcgrady
Good list, and interesting how at least half of the points are about
localisation/internationalization. The date point was good I find that one
very annoying. The easiest way to work it out on forums is usually to look at
the previous post and see what number goes down (day).

I didn't realise the mm/dd format was only officially used in two countries.
I've never understood why it's use at all, it makes much more sense going from
day-month-year. Is there a reason mm/dd was chosen in the US and Belize?

~~~
losvedir
> _Is there a reason mm/dd was chosen in the US_

I don't know which came first, but it agrees with the way we say it out loud.
"Today is September tenth." So, maybe that's why?

And I think in other countries, it's said the other way around, right? "Today
is the tenth of September?" That would actually be okay sounding in the U.S.,
too, though a little uncommon. Can you say "Today is tenth September"? That
sounds very weird to me.

~~~
panacea
September _the_ Tenth, or Tenth _of_ September.

Both read well, and when we use shorthand we use a "/" in place of the/of.

It makes more sense to order consistently by unit. So day < month < year

month > day < year seems a bit silly.

~~~
losvedir
I agree it's a silly ordering. What dialect of English do you speak?

> _September the Tenth_

Even this sounds a little funny to my ears. In American English people say
almost exclusively "September Tenth" in that order without any prepositions.

~~~
grecy
> In American English people say almost exclusively

As an Australian living in North America for seven years, my ears still daily
pickup when the American dialect leaves out words.

Examples that come to mind: "Two hundred three", "Write me", "September tenth"

~~~
gwillen
> "Two hundred three"

I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on this one. In American school, I
learned that 'two hundred three' is the only acceptable version, but in casual
speech people invariably say 'two hundred and three', which sounds more
natural.

Which one do you say?

~~~
dbaupp
At least Australia and the UK correctly ( ;P ) use "two hundred and three".

There's a wealth of differences between British and American english:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_Bri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English)
(Of particular relevance here is the numbers section.)

------
Tichy
Why is nobody using the ISO format for dates?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601> yyyy-mm-dd? Another benefit is that it
sorts correctly in the file explorers (I used to name my photo folders like
that...).

Coming from a country where we typically do dd/mm I can never remember what
the English standard is. I've taken to always writing the name of the month to
be sure.

Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be true? I thought Android was
outselling the iPhone by now. But perhaps the low end Android buyers don't
really surf?

~~~
fredley
Because it's a format rarely used outside of an engineering context. If your
users are 100% from a technical background, and always will be, fine.
Otherwise, a lot of your users will find it difficult to parse dates in this
format.

~~~
HumanamuH
According to the map of date formats in the article, there are _a lot_ of
people worldwide who use this format outside of an engineering context.

------
marme
Qihoo’s 360 browser is not a full browser it behaves like an addon to IE. It
will use the IE kernel of whatever version is installed on the users machine.
So if the user still has IE6 it will render pages with the IE6 kernel. You
dont really need to pay attention to it as a web developer you just need to
know that if it the page displays correctly in IE6 then it should display
correctly for a user Qihoo’s 360 browser that uses IE6 kernel

~~~
angersock
"if it the page displays correctly in IE6"

...erm, well damn.

Why's it so popular, compared to Firefox, Chrome, or something else?

------
mediascreen
Another problem is the address format. US sites that ship internationally
almost always require a state field - something that's not a part of the
address here in Sweden. For sites with lots of international customers it
might be better to let them format the address since there are a lot of
different formats: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_(geography)>

~~~
Macha
Also mandatory zip codes. I keep getting sites that won't let me submit a form
without a zip code, even after I've deliberately chosen Ireland in the list
and the page refreshed and replaced the state field with a county field. The
latest case where this happened to me was creating an account on Sony's
website for the Planetside 2 beta. I usually enter in na or n/a for that, but
I've even had sites that attempt to validate the zip code according to US
rules even after I've selected Ireland in the country box.

(For anyone wondering, post codes in Ireland don't exist outside Dublin, and
even then they're a number from 1-24, which doesn't validate either)

------
ArekDymalski
Good post. The only question is: are these developers "uncultured" or simply
focusing on potential paying customers?

~~~
StavrosK
We're uncultured.

~~~
uummuu5
We're "uncultured" to ignorant, pretentious, asses like the author of this
post.

~~~
freelancesci
Ignorant in what sense?

------
SkyMarshal
Also worth reading is the link to how the 'Qihoo 360 Safe Browser' won the
Internet in China:

<http://www.digital-dd.com/qihoo-browser-war/>

Basically, exploiting people's ignorance of the Internet, security, and,
according to them, the Chinese people's deference to authority.

------
mistercow
>(I’d love to hear insight on why there’s no .us on these).

It's not difficult to understand. If you're targeting a mainstream demographic
in the US, then any domain name that isn't a .com is basically worthless.
Among the non-tech-savvy, many will not even recognize "example.us" as a URL,
and even the tech-savvy will sometimes forget and type "example.com", which
means that you need to buy the .com as well.

So buying the .us domain in addition is basically just paying $4/year so that
you don't look Americentric... in the rare case that somebody even notices.

------
davewasthere
I love the fact that Indonesians only seem to use Firefox or Chrome. The rest
of the world is playing catch-up.

~~~
SnaKeZ
Not so uncultured ;)

------
DanBC
I like this article! Internationalisation is something I'm sort of interested
in, although I haven't done anything about it.

1) I know that I've lost this war, but it's a shame that the browser that your
customer is using is relevant. It's a shame that people can't just code
standards compliant code and it'll run fine on any standards compliant
browser.

2) Using letters instead of numbers for months is good. I'd prefer ISO 8601,
but I know that's going to be a long time.

3) Names are a difficult problem. There's money to be made with a decent name
input, validation, fixing library.

4) Is complicated for me. Do I want people to code standards compliant stuff
with graceful degradation? Or do I want people to push those using obsolete
broken systems to use something better? I had hoped that the rise of netbooks,
and then smart phones, and then tablets, would make coders realise that many
people are using weak[1] computers and code appropriately. Unfortunately many
people have a regular site (big and stupid) and a mobile site (small, stupid,
and usually broken beyond usable).

8) I'd love a better fix for timezones. I'd love some kind of markup magic
that means Bob can type (something like) <13:45 EST> and it gets autochanged
to whatever my local timezone is. (On a tangent, I want Minecraft to buy
Swatch BEATS and so people can use those for online competitions etc.)

~~~
billswift
>The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

\- - Andrew S. Tanenbaum

I wonder if he still thinks saying that was a good idea.

------
makmanalp
>Firefox and Chrome command 91% of the market ... This is a perfect example of
where knowing your audience is key and blanket statements made on a global
scale are frequently irrelevant.

Just in case you fall into a premature delusion: If you market to Europe or
Asia at all:

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-
monthly-201108-201208-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-
monthly-201108-201208-bar) [http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-as-
monthly-201108-201208-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-as-
monthly-201108-201208-bar)

Asia and Europe beg to differ with their 25%+ IE ratios. Sometimes you can't
"know your market". Google didn't market orkut to any region but by some freak
chance of nature it became _the_ social network in Brazil. Many times, you
can't know who will use your product until they do.

Will you find buyers for your product in Asia or Europe? Considering the
number of people who live there, probably.

p.s. One thing that bothers me about statcounter is that there are no absolute
sample sizes specified so for all you know, the data could be based on 100
people.

------
iandanforth
While I agree that it's important to _know_ about these considerations, I
think it's equally valid to _ignore_ them.

If I know my target audience I can properly support them. I can give them the
best possible experience because I understand their needs and their
assumptions. However, if I don't, then when I try and I will fail in
embarrassing and sometimes infuriating ways.

I like to develop and design purposefully. I want to make something that may
be available to all, but is tailored to perfection for a small group. This
gives me a set of constraints and frees me from others. When I choose a
locality I can ignore others and focus on the assumptions and ideal experience
for that locality.

Obviously this doesn't work if you're more of a 'fishing' based company. You
need to be just good enough for everyone that some group or another will bite
and then you can focus on them while maintaining 'good enough' for everyone
else.

The thing I'd hate to see is developers reading this article and wasting time
on i18n and RTL support when they should be focusing on an exceptional
experience for a user group they understand.

------
sp8
> 6\. Country code top level domains give context

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I'm a self-proclaimed domain name pedant and
this gradual decline into mainstream _abuse_ of ccTLDs drives me mad on a
daily basis.

------
jp_sc
> 6\. Country code top level domains give context

And are a pain to handle.

 __.com __

\- US$ 10 ~

\- Many registar to choose (remember GoDaddy).

 __.xx __

\- US$ 40 ~

\- Usually only one registar available, if you don't like it you're screwed

\- Usually the most hideous admin interface, sometimes only functional in IE

~~~
corford
Just as an FYI (in case it's useful), I recently had to register 20+ country
level tld variants of our .com address and after a lot of research the best
outfit I found in terms of price, range of country level tlds offered, modern
admin console etc. was <http://www.gandi.net>

------
davidw
> 6\. Country code top level domains give context

However, pay attention to the fact that "top level domain" does not
necessarily have anything to do with language.

For instance, .it = Italian, right?

Wrong. There are German and French language minorities here, amongst others.
Other countries are even more confusing/problematic.

~~~
ngsayjoe
I hate it so much that linked in default to Malay every time I landed on its
pages. No way to change it to English.

~~~
bmckeough
Is Linked In not honoring the Accept-Language header, or is your browser
specifying Malay as Accept-Language?

[http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14...](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4)

------
atirip
And there's one more: don't assume that name on credit card is written in
7-bit ASCII.

------
dkroy
I have never heard of the 360 Secure Browser before, but I have found the link
for it <http://se.360.cn/>. I was going to download it to see what it was all
about.

------
geoka9
Lesson 0: make the text on your blog/site darker than the current fad du jour
says it should be. It's a pain to read this on the common computer display.

------
zwass
Fascinating data presented there, but sometimes it's hard to see through the
sarcasm to the point he's trying to make.

------
_feda_
I love the use of the .st for sites like linkli.st that end with list. And of
course for the smalltalk community.

------
togasystems
Concerning timezones, is there any viable way to get the user's timezone?
Javascript only?

~~~
TillE
Most sites require manual entry of the timezone; I've seen very few that
bother to detect it. Javascript seems to be a good option, though it doesn't
exactly get you the timezone, just the current offset from UTC.

~~~
drbawb
>just the current offset from UTC.

Never gave it a second thought, but this actually explains a lot.

DST, of course, shifts the offset by 1 hour, and I've often noticed that sites
mis-detect my timezone by an hour with startling regularity.

------
TomGullen
Pretty cool list. Small nit pick though:

> In the UK, it’s all about .uk.

I very rarely see .uk domains, most at .co.uk

~~~
RobAley
I'm perhaps an odd case, because I work in academia in the area of government
policy on health, but on a day-in day-out basis I see .nhs.uk, .gov.uk,
.ac.uk, .org.uk and the occasional .mod.uk. As the parent of two toddlers, I'm
starting to look at more and more .sch.uk and in my IT work I quite often see
.net.uk and .nic.uk addresses.

~~~
robin_reala
The new UK Government site can be found at simply <http://gov.uk>

~~~
RobAley
And its a big pile of pants. (N.b. I note from your CV that you work on
"Development of large e-government" sites, so if it's one of yours, please
don't take it personally!).

The search is fairly useless, it misses large chunks of Government services
such as health and the military, and for those that it does cover it doesn't
either a) go into much detail beyond generic overviews or b) provide easy to
find links to more specific websites. E.g. I wanted to find out what local
policing initiatives were happening in my area, so I went to the crime and
justice -> police section, but there was no local information or links to my
local police force. At the end of the day Google and the existing array of .uk
sites I cited previously did the job marvellously.

Its also something of a red herring, as even if the enormous task of
delivering what it promises is somehow achieved, the vast array of government
agencies (all the way down to local government) are so disparate (particularly
in relation to online presence and marketing) that they will not support it
and will continue to promote their own websites directly, leaving it to fade
into obscurity. Even Google and other automatic algorithms won't like it,
because the more pertinent, local, definitive information won't be there.

The web works best as a decentralised, federated information store. Monolithic
sites like these miss the point, miss the opportunity the web brings, and
almost invariably fail to live up to the goals they set themselves. The fact
they are usually over budget and over time is another side of the same coin...

------
juan_juarez
Simplifying timezones as GMT offsets completely throws away local DST rules.

------
uummuu5
calling people "uncultured" for sticking to the conventions of their country
is ridiculous and invalidates the author's entire argument. He makes 1 (MAYBE
2) valid argument(s) in the entire piece and largely comes off as a
pretentious ass. By his logic we shouldn't have to call this language
"English" because it's not just spoken in England. The US invented the
internet, if he wants to impose his warped, socialist views, he should create
his own internet.

~~~
mhurron
> if he wants to impose his warped, socialist views, he should create his own
> internet

Words have meanings, maybe you should learn them before you use them. Here's a
hint, socialist isn't an insult or a dirty word.

------
JabavuAdams
"Honk Kong"?

~~~
derleth
> "Honk Kong"?

It's where Harpo Marx lives.

------
Toshio
There's an eleventh one, which should probably be given number zero for being
top priority: read this essay and live by it:

Lesson Zero: Don't Be A Sharecropper:
[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace)

~~~
tomcorrigan
How is this at all relevant to the linked article?

~~~
shurane
Isn't the link saying that web dev is a more free and cross compatible
environment because no one organization controls it? I thought it was sort of
relevant. Basically a reason to do web Dec.

~~~
nollidge
By that criteria it could be posted on any web dev article. THIS one was
specifically about internationalization and localization.

