[horde] Language selection on the login screen

[Michael J Rubinsky]

Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:

> Zitat von Gunnar Wrobel <wrobel at horde.org>:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Yesterday a few of the devs discussed the language selection on the  
>> login screen. The bottom line was that this selection only takes  
>> effect if the user did not set the language in the preferences.
>>
>> I also received a short tweet by someone wondering about the  
>> language selection on demo.horde.org. He selected "English" and got  
>> French text.
>>
>> Now I thought that it makes sense to lock the "language" preference  
>> on demo.horde.org so that the login selection always holds. But  
>> when I do that the language selection is no longer displayed on the  
>> login screen.
>>
>> Is there another workaround?
>
> Beside resetting the pref on the demo server from time to time, no.
>
>> And usability-wise I still wonder if it makes any sense to  
>> prominently place a language selection on the first screen the user  
>> sees if this has no effect whatsoever in case the user set his  
>> language preference. Wouldn't it make more sense to offer the  
>> language selection as a login task in case it has not been set yet?
>
> I don't think that makes sense, because for most people the default  
> selection on the login screen is just fine, and adding another step  
> during login is rather annoying. This is only a problem if several  
> users with different languages share the same account. Which should  
> not happen in any real world scenario but demo servers.

What about something like what the view mode selection does? Provide a  
Default/Automatic choice for the language that would cause the user  
preference to be enforced. If the user does not have a pref set, use a  
admin-defined default and show the user a notification that we have  
choosen a language since no pref was set. Selecting a language  
explicitly on the login screen would overide the user's pref.

I understand the reasoning for the way it currently operates, but it  
*did* take me by surprise when I selected Deutsch and got english text  
- my first thought was that language selection was broken. I'm a dev,  
so I imagine a typical user could be just as, if not more, confused by  
this.


-- 
mike

The Horde Project (www.horde.org)
mrubinsk at horde.org