Build all your applications ‘global’ – even the local ones.

I have not yet had to create a site for an Intranet - or something that may be seen by visitors in only one locale/language. So even though I don't work on enterprise-level projects, everything I do goes on the big network (www) and whatever I do from here on will be global, even if it's in only one language, say English.

Even a small project for a local business can be seen by everyone because the big network is all over the place. But not everyone speaks English. I speak Spanish, which makes me a member of a huge community right here in the U.S.A. (there are more Hispanics – 39 million as of June 2003, said USA Today - in this country than there are Canadians in Canada).

So, if I have a product or service to offer, wouldn't it be foolish to limit my potential customers by ignoring that group? A lot of them are going to run into my web site anyway and it would be good if they can all read what I have to say, no?

That's just an example of numbers right here, within the US. If you can do shipping and handling to outside the US, the numbers get really big, and not just for Hispanics. This is all worth considering when you are creating things that can be seen everywhere.

Building an application for I18N from scratch does not take any longer than building it in, say, English. But to take an existing English one and convert it to I18N is pretty much writing it all over again. So, what's wrong with building it I18N the first time?

Even if you don't go beyond English, it's cool to have all your text content separate from your application code. Your text is in a file you can create with Notepad, if you want to; you change the source text in your text file, and next time you browse to your app, you see the changes. Cool? You bet your fundus!

And then, if you want your visitors to be able to switch, say, between English and Spanish, you just make a copy of your text file and change all the text to Spanish, add that copy to your site's assets, and that's it!

Sure, this sounds simplistic. Actually there is a little more to it, but it's by no means rocket science.

I have done several little I18N apps because I found this is very easy to do in ColdFusion. I am now a beginner FLEXer and was very excited to learn that I18N/G11N/L10N, including runtime language switching just became much, much easier to do in FLEX. I will be writing something about that in the next few days.