A language selection menu in your application

I just posted an article with some code on the CodeProject that:

1. Helps your app manage satellite DLLs (a.k.a. resource DLLs).
2. Creates and manage a language selection menu.

The article is here.

Which is the safest server ? Which the safest browser ?

Interesting post by Jeff Atwood (relaying George Ou) about the evolution of security records of IE vs Firefox and IIS vs Apache.

But who cares since most people on both camps seem to have religious opinions anyway :-(

Did I help spreading a hoax ?

My previous post was about the approval of the Catalan .cat TLD.

Is this true information or is this a hoax ? When I read about it on Friday, I tried to find the original press release on the ICANN web site, to no avail.
Still, Google News reports lots of press coverage about this .cat approval. BTW, all articles also mentioned (and commented) another decision of the ICANN (delay of .xxx approval).

So. Everyone and their dog writes about it, giving the same details, but there's no track of the original announcement...

It suddenly stroke me that this may be a total hoax. And I helped propagate it. :-(

I'll keep an eye on this...

Catalonia gets its own domain suffix: .cat

The ICANN recently approved .cat as the new TLD for the Catalan domains.
Catalonia is the region covering the north east end of Spain. Although everyone there speaks perfect Castillian (in other words: Spanish), the Catalan people have their own language and culture. And they now have their own domain suffix.

I wonder how long we'll have to wait until someone buys the Catalan domain ilovemy ? :-)

New stuff on the C++ front

Matt Pietrek (Yes, the author of MSJ/MSDN's Under the Hood column) is attending the PDC. He reports new stuff coming up in the C++ language (Are these MS-only extensions ? If they are MS initiatiatives, will the C++ Standard Committee approve them ? Is it implemented in VS2005 ?).

An auto keyword that frees you from typing long type names ? Hey, someone realized that the STL is requires way too much boring typing. At last :-)

And some features to support threading more easily.

Glad to read that C++ evolution is not limited to improved managed code support.

Why don't translated items disappear ?

appTranslator's Items to be translated mode acts as a filter to display only those texts that were not translated yet (or the ones whose original text was modified, requiring an update of their translations).
I believe this is one of the most import features in a localization tool: You should never have to look for the remaining work items. Neither should you ever be afraid that you forgot to translate a text somewhere in your app. Manually checking is like finding a needle in a hay stack. And computers are very good at that game, hence let your tool do that job for you.

But there's a little behaviour of this Items to be translated mode that may sound like it doesn't follow the logic. Keep with me :

When you translate an item (such as a menu item), this item switches to the Translated status (see picture).



Question:
In Items to be translated mode, why doesn't this item simply disappear ? Since it's translated, it doesn't meet the view mode criteria anymore, hence it should no longer show up. Why do you have to hit the F5 key (Refresh) to make it disappear ?

The short answer:
It's all about improving the user experience.

The long answer:
Because it would be confusing: As soon as you click OK, what you just typed disappears from the screen. Most of us more or less incousciously look back in the list at the item they just translated to kind of double-check. Not finding it is very confusing.
There's another reason to show the green-checked items : It makes people happier when they can see all the work they already performed. If the items disappear at once, the translator has the feeling he's walking on an endless road. Which makes him/her frustrated. Which makes him/her hate appTranslator. Which I don't want :-)

I'm not the first one to use this technique : In Outlook's Tasks List, when you check a task to mark it as done, it doesn't disappear but instead a line is drawn through it, exactly as you would do if your tasks list were written down on a piece of paper. I remember I once read a paper about usability tests by MS showing that people are happier if they see the tasks they alreadycompleted. (Can't find the link anymore unfortunately).

appTranslator 1.01 is released !

appTranslator 1.01 is is mostly a service release version. It does however introduces one useful new feature : The Find command.



This version contains a lot of small bug fixes. You are likely to be hit by a couple of them (such as translated executables with comboboxes that no longer drop down if they were resized in appTranslator) therefore I recommend you upgrade to this new version.

If you are a registered user of appTranslator and you didn't hear of me yet, don't worry: You'll receive an e-mail with the registered version shortly.

If not, the demo version is available here.

Happy translations !

Katrina: Belgium helps US

I just read that US accepted Belgium's help.

I'm really glad we can help. I just wonder how and what this help consists in !?