Thursday, January 19, 2006

Somebody needs to understand page display language is not the desired download language

Good news: Microsoft recently released some localized versions of the .Net Framework 2.0. These language packs are downloadable from the link below. Bad news: Microsoft still doesn't really get it when offering downloads in alternate languages. What do I mean? Click this link .NET Framework Version 2.0 Language Pack. It'll be in English (nice, as that's the specified display language in the URL). Now click the Download button. You'll get a lovely popup (that may or may not be sized to a readable size). That popup says that there IS NO English language pack. Funnny, huh? That they didn't bother to explain that the English localization is built into the primary release of the .Net Framework is not my complaint. That they wasted my time in even offering an English version is also not my complaint. Here's my complaint, return to the first page, select any other language and click the Change button. Now you get a version that offers another download, and that one will be localized to the selected language. But so will the download screen! That's just dumb. Even worse is that the file you download is always going to be called langpack.exe (not a different filename for each locale). Even worse is that now the Change Language dropdown now has the language names in the language you picked to download. The concept of what file to download (which language pack) is very different than the UI language of the page (which should driven by the browser accept for culture).

No comments: