Woods and Trees !

[zapatak]

Sorry to trouble you but I have been struggling all day with what I imagine is a rather easy problem to solve....

I am working on a bilingual website, English/French. To avoid unnecessary duplication and increased possibility of errors I am trying to arrange it so that all the graphics, video links etc are on the 'Mouse Off' layer. I then have two more layers, 'French' and 'English holding the relevant texts correctly formatted in their prescribed positions on the page. The idea was to place two small buttons, cunningly disguised as national flags also on the 'Mouse Off' layer. The user clicks on the icon of his desired language and a link in the Web Properties box, something like:- popup:"english" open "french" close, or vice versa, does the rest.

Unfortunately it doesn't want to play !

Any advice on this problem will be most welcome !

Merci d'Avance...

[gwpriester]

Someone will probably have a better answer, but why not create two sites, one with English and one With French. When the visitor lands on the home page, she or he has the option to click on cunning flag icons at the top of the page. If the visitor lands on the English site, and wants a site in English, cool. If the visitor prefers French, she or he clicks the adorable petite flag and goes to the French language version.

Basically you will have one site with all the appropriate files and a sub-folder for the other language. The sub-folder will contain the entire website in the other language.

If your site is mysite.com and the sub-folder is called French, then the link to the French language version is mysite.com/French

[Chris M]

I was writing a long winded version of the same. Much easier and less prone to mistakes to create two separate versions.

[Acorn]

I produced this as an example:

Xara - Franglais.xar

The expressions are of the form - popup: open "French" close "English"

Acorn

[gwpriester]

I have moved this thread to Xara Web Design Chat.

[gcellison]

As @gwpriester and @ChrisM suggest, I strongly recommend two separate sites. My website is in Spanish and English, the English being in a subdirectory of the Spanish domain. I do all the work in English, and when it’s finished, I cut and paste the Spanish text for the alternate version.

What you suggest sounds clever, but it is very complicated. Moreover, search engines get confused if they can’t identify the language of the site, and it may end up reducing the likelihood of showing up in search results.

[zapatak]

Hi, and thanks for your rapid responses.

As far as making multiple version sites is concerned, I have been there. I have done trilingual holiday letting sites and local museum work. Quick and easy to set up but six months later when the memory cells have been disolved in red wine and you are asked to update and modify they can be a real knicker twister !

I liked Acorn's solution and that is very much like something which I tried and had in mind. Problems are that the initial page has no text until a button is pressed. Everytime you link to another page you have once again to make the language choice.

These issues could be solved if one could set the status of layers 'visible' or 'not visible' in advance. I could be wrong but it appears to me that by default all new layers are off until turned on.
It would be really good if the status of a layer could be optionally transferred to the web page it linked to. Meaning if French was turned on in the index page it would remain on until actively changed.

Maybe this is already possible ? Happen I am asking too much ? Looking forward to hearing your views and suggestions.

Stay safe !

[bwood]

@acorn you never cease to amaze. How did you get so smart?

[Acorn]

@acorn you never cease to amaze. How did you get so smart?

Bill, you just have to sweat away all the stupid.

Hope you are back on-line with a proper connection.

Acorn

[zapatak]

Dear Acorn,

let me apologise for not replying earlier but we have had eight days without internet ! In the current situation this is enough to drive one mad ! Right now we have a blistering 2mbps but this is a lot better than zilch !

I must admit that your detailed instructions are a bit like too much information for me and I made no progress in that department.

However I did more or less complete the small site but unfortunately there is one small question which I hope you have an answer for...

I tried out the idea of making the site with responsive web design, it is more or less successful appart from your trick to make a language appear on start up which doesn't appear to work on the smaller smartphone model.

Clicking the flag icon brings the text in but unlike in the desktop model I have text empty screens when starting on the mobile model.

I enclose the XAR file so that you can see what is or isn't happening.

You may enjoy the slideshows !

Best wishes