Monthly Archives: January 2011

One of the most popular Opera extensions is Translate, which translates a page using an automatic service. But some pages have already been translated, and checked for quality manually. HTML has provided markup to make this clear (rel="alternate" hreflang="xx" as attributes to a link) for more than a decade, but this has not been implemented in browsers, which makes it hard for users to discover.

The new Opera extension Swaplang, developed specifically for the MLW project, is an example of how a browser might natively implement this functionality. If a page uses the proper HTML markup, it shows that there are alternatives available and lets you select between them. To try it, go to the Swaplang download page with Opera 11 (or higher) and install it

If you need a test page, try Character Encodings.

The extension is still in development, with some enhancements expected. The source code is available under the Apache 2.0 open source license, in case you would rather take it in your own directions…

La marca de orden de bytes (BOM) en HTML (The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML)

Declaración de codificaciones de caracteres en HTML (Declaring character encodings in HTML)

Normalización en HTML y CSS (Normalization in HTML and CSS)

These articles were translated into Spanish thanks to Spanish Translation Services, Trusted Translations, Inc.

Zeichencodierungen (Character encodings)

HTML und XHTML ausliefern (Serving HTML & XHTML)

Verwendung von b- und i-Elementen (Using b and i elements)

The translations of the following articles were also updated.

Zeichencodierung für Anfänger (Character encodings for beginners)

Verwendung von Zeichen-Escapes in Markup und CSS (Using character escapes in markup and CSS)

These articles were translated into German thanks to Gunnar Bittersmann.

4-5 April 2011, Pisa, Italy. Hosted jointly by the Istituto di Informatica e Telematica and Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.

The MultilingualWeb project is looking at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the Web multilingually. The project aims to raise the visibility of existing best practices and standards and identify gaps. The core vehicle for this is a series of four events which are planned for the coming two years.

After the highly successful workshop in Madrid last year, this workshop will continue to survey currently available best practices and standards aimed at helping content creators, localizers, tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web.

Participation is free. We welcome participation from both speakers and non-speaking attendees. For more information, see the Call for Participation

Bidi- Pierdere de spatii (Bidi space loss)

HTML, XHTML, XML si Codurile de Control (HTML, XHTML, XML and Control Codes)

Cand sa folosim negocierea limbajului (When to use language negotiation)

These articles were translated into Romanian thanks to Costea Marian.