Global by Design

Adventures in Web Globalization

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Of Flags and Gateways

Posted on by John Yunker

When designing a global gateway - you generally want to avoid flags. After all, what flag would you use to represent Spanish? And what language would the flag for Switzerland indicate - a country with four official languages?

Well, for every rule there is an exception to it. The Smart Car site (www.smart.com) uses flags, but also includes language-specific sub-links, such as “d” for German and “e” for English.

smart_gateway.gif

While I prefer the way Ikea handles countries and languages better, I do like to look at this gateway. For as much as I criticize the use of flags, I do enjoy looking at them.

Written by John Yunker
John Yunker is president of Byte Level Research and author of The Web Globalization Report Card. He is based in San Diego, California.

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Tags: Web Globalization