A look at Microsoft’s website for downloading localized versions of IE8
A while back, Tristan passed me a blog post by the Internet Explorer 8 team that announced the availability of IE8 in over sixty languages. Their opening quote: “We are pleased to announce the availability of Internet Explorer 8 in 20 additional languages today. Internet Explorer 8 is now available in a total of 63 languages!” That’s a nice accomplishment by their team and congratulations.
I went to their site to investigate how Microsoft offers downloads of their localized versions and noticed some distinctions between the Firefox and IE8 experience.
Most interesting for me off the bat, IE8 is offering some languages Firefox does not have, including Konkani, Kyrgyz, Malay, and Uzbek (Latin). Those are the languages listed on their blog, but I am not sure if that is a comprehensive list of the differences, so I could use some help on determining where we fall short. It’s hard for me to tell from the official download page, which lists eighty-five different “county/region” selections, bringing me to my next observation.
Microsoft asks in English for its users to select a “country/region” and operating system. Then, they automatically send users to a localized download page. That seems to be pretty nice, perhaps a user experience person could give me an opinion. Looking at the list, I did see some Indian language fonts, indicating Indian versions, but I don’t know if that corresponds directly to a country or region. Either way, the count in that drop down selector is around eighty-five. Therefore, I don’t know if they offer sixty-three or eight-five localizations. Either number is impressive.
In addition to all this, Microsoft’s “Worldwide Sites” page lists fifty-four “country-languages” for a user to select that will change the UI of the website to that country-language. Mozilla does not distinguish based on country specifically; we simply list languages. Interestingly, they have several versions of French available for France, Canada, Switzerland, and North Africa. Mozilla lists only one version of French.
At Mozilla, we do not offer downloads based on “country/region” because we feel that it is best to showcase the language of the localization, not the geopolitical boundary. For instance, in India, we have eleven different localization teams, so isolating downloads to country/region didn’t seem to get users exactly what they wanted. Instead, we try to provide the best possible download by looking at the language of the browser in use at the moment of a visit to Mozilla for download and offering the version that matches that language. If we cannot recognize the existing language, we have a series of fall-back options in our website code that tries to offer the best possible download. If that doesn’t work, the en-US page provides an “Other Systems and Languages” link available just under the main download box. That takes users to our all.html page where all of our localizations can be seen.
Just looking at the copy of the Microsoft download site, the IE8 team states that the browser is available in many “locales/languages”. We use a bit different terminology in an attempt to distinguish the term “localization” from “language”. For Mozilla, localizations are partly identified by the language of the UI. But, a localization is customized to the region where the language is most prevalently spoken. For instance, using our eleven Indian localizations as an example again, each team is able to customize their version of the browser so that web services like search or protocol handlers are packaged together in one download. It may be a nuance, but for Mozilla, we try not to interchange language and localization.
Lastly, I am not quite sure how those sixty-three (eighty-five) languages are shipped to end-users. Does Microsoft ship each version simultaneously? Or, are versions offered as “downloadable” packs after major release in Englsh? In the past, I had heard that IE only ships one version (en-US) at the time of a major release. But, I suspect that has changed, I just couldn’t find the information anywhere. Please link me in the comments if you know.
@seth from the little I’ve seen of this these are all outputs from Microsoft’s LIP (Local Interface Program). Many of these languages don’t ship with default Windows. You need en-US and then you can install the language pack. Can’t find any links though
Microsoft usually doesn’t do only one simultaneous release: if you’re not in the first group of languages (and this happens sometimes for Italian), you have to wait until your localized version is released.
IE8 release schedule: http://www.browser-watch.com/2009/03/20/internet-explorer-8-release-schedule/
Another example: IE7 was released in English on 10-18-2006, the Italian version was planned for 01-01-2007 but released on 11-16-2008.
It’s not a nuance, but it’s part of the definition (Language localisation on Wikipedia):
As Dwayne said, many of the languages listed on that site aren’t shipped on default Windows installations, i.e. you have to download and install a patch on top of another installation.
This also limits the use of a language to a specific region (note that Basque is listed only for the Spanish region, what about Basque speakers in France?), since AFAIK the Basque UI for Windows can only be installed on top of a Spanish installation of Windows. As I’m not a Windows user I can’t tell for sure if this also applies to IE.
Regarding the locales count, after selecting my country/region I can count up to fifty six (56):
ar bg bn bs bs-cyrl ca cs da de el en es et eu fi fr gu he hi hr hu id it ja kk kn ko kok lt lv mk ml mr ms nl no pa pl pt-br pt-pt ro ru sk sl sq sr srb sv ta te th tr uk vi zh-cn zh-tw
Perhaps the list is longer/shorter depending on the Windows version (XP/Vista).
IE8 was installed in English until recently even when I choose the Dutch version of Vista Ultimate. Only last month did I get an update of IE8 to have it in Dutch. Vista itself was of course already in Dutch. IE8 was the only program that wasn’t translated.
The spreadsheet at http://www.gerv.net/hacking/l10n-stats/ has details of exactly what languages Microsoft ships. For details of when they ship them, you’ll have to search back through old postings on the IE blog. They usually post an announcement when new packs are available.