pouët.net

That's not what the QA thinks :p Now, to be honest, I'm not sure if it was Japanese, Chinese or Korean. I might be wrong on the particular language but my point stands. The NDA unfortunately prevents me from discussing specifics but the solution we had to use wasn't pretty :)

Ger: I would have thought it's quite rare for a web app to do enough content generation within Javascript to require full-scale localization like that... normally for websites "in the wild", even for JS-heavy sites, you'd have most of the strings written out in the HTML (via whatever server-side stuff you're using) and just manipulate those from your JS.

For the WWF site there were a few isolated places where the JS contained hard-coded strings (example: where we use JS to build scrolling panels, and need alt text for 'up' and 'down' when we stick the arrow buttons in) so I had to hack up a simple solution with a hash table (which is the first thing you'll see if you view source).

Server-side JS is a completely different ball game of course... I'd be the first to champion Javascript as a serious language, and once someone releases a 'killer' framework it'll be up there with PHP, Ruby and Python as an accepted platform for web apps. (And when that happens, you can bet that third-party localization libraries will start springing up for it...)


doom: Any specific criticisms? I can't promise that I can do anything about them (especially if it's the politics of the green movement that you have an issue with, rather than UI usability, say...) but I'd be interested to hear any constructive feedback.

Was it viscous and murky?

i believe ASP has a <script runat="server">..</script> construct. i've never used it, but especially if there's some sort of smart variable/function sharing (i.e. transparently accessing a variable set in a runat="server" script in a runat="client" script or something, or even functions with ajax and stuff), then that'd be damn fucking powerful.

gasman: No no, the UI looks good, I wish more sites were as nicely done as that. It's the test that's fucked up. I use 2.78 times as much something (energy, food, fossil fuel, what?) as I should because I bought a washing machine less than a year ago. If I change nothing with respect to my consumption but take the same test in a couple of months, I'm down to 2.16. And then after taking the test it suggests things I could do to improve my score, like install shelves above radiators, which wasn't on the test. It's really all about throwing random bullshit figures at people to make them feel guilty and donate money to keep all those paid employees of the WWF happy. A scam, in other words. But that's off-topic, isn't it.. anyway yeah, the site works fine. ;)

Oh, except in the little box that says "we've also calculated your carbon footprint" etc., the text doesn't quite fit (Firefox 3.0.10 on Windows XP SP3).

You're welcome. :P

Your footprint is
7.08 planets

* food 10%
* travel 18%
* Home 57%
* stuff 15%
* We've also calculated your carbon footprint, which is 33.06 tonnes per annum


too bad they didnt ask me about how i handle waste oil and batteries :D

Heh, yeah, and unsurprisingly, it looks like it's impossible to score below 1 "planet". Guess there's no point then, we're doomed no matter what. 8)

we need "planet" in the SI system!

Cheers! All fair points - there's an FAQ that clarifies a lot of that stuff, but it's kind of buried until you sign up, and now I'm thinking that maybe it shouldn't be... In short: the "planet" score is apparently to do with the land/sea area required to produce what you consume versus what's sustainable; they cheerfully admit that the initial questionnaire has massive generalisations and omissions, but once you sign up there's a whole load of other things you can tick off (like the shelves over radiators thing - I don't *think* there's one about dumping waste oil...) to make it more accurate; and yep, there's a 1 planet baseline (actually you can get down to 0.9something once you've signed up and filled everything in AFAIR) which represents your share of the impact of government policy, and on that basis they encourage you to join WWF's campaigning side. Or, as you put it, to make you feel guilty and donate money. :-)

Re the text overflow: Bah, yeah, that layout was a pain in the arse. (And is a good example of what not to do if you're planning on implementing multi-language. Woo, on topic again!)