We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use […]
Continue reading →
Like all good geeks, I have far too many domain names that I acquired for interesting projects which never took off. My latest is a bit different though. https://⏻.ga/ That's "Unicode Power Symbol Dot Gabon". Because why not. Regular readers will know that I helped get ⏻ and several power symbols into Unicode. When I […]
Continue reading →
How do you show two languages simultaneously in HTML? If you want to show text in a foreign language, the markup is simple: <html lang="en-GB"> ... As Caesar said: <i lang="la">veni vidi vici</i> That says the page is in British English (en-GB) but the specific phrase is in Latin (la). But how can you offer […]
Continue reading →
The set of HTML <ruby> elements allow us to add pronunciation above text. For example: "When you visit the zoo, be sure to see the panda - 熊(Xióng)猫(māo)." This is written as: <ruby>熊<rp>(</rp><rt>Xióng</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby><ruby>猫<rp>(</rp><rt>māo</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby>. That is, the word or character which needs text above it is wrapped in <ruby>. The pronunciation is wrapped in <rt>. The […]
Continue reading →
If you've been around programming circles long enough, you'll probably have read the seminal "If PHP Were British". If not, go read it now. I'll wait. I love the idea of a non-American programming language. I'm aware that there are some, but I'm unaware of any which are in British English. Except, perhaps, BBC Basic. […]
Continue reading →
/ləʊk(ə)lʌɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/ The ability to adjust a user-interface to the user's local language or dialect Because I live in the UK, I speak en_GB (English, Great Britain) rather than en_US (English, Simplified United States). Mostly, all dialects of English are mutually intelligible. Sure, the Brits love the letter U and the Americans stick a Z in […]
Continue reading →
Recently, Lea Verou asked an important question about whether HTML should have a standardised way of letting users select a country from a list. Lea Verou@LeaVerouHTML Idea: <input type="country"> which would become a searchable dropdown with all countries and their flags.Wouldn't that be awesome?❤️ 1,863💬 113🔁 013:17 - Sat 21 October 2017 You can read […]
Continue reading →
We all know what an email address looks like and how to validate them, right? A few years ago I got the Chinese domain name 莎士比亚.org. You can browse to it, link to it, and send email to it. Or can you? When I tried two years ago, none of the major email providers supported […]
Continue reading →