Global by Design

Adventures in Web Globalization

 

I’ve Never Seen This Global Gateway Before…

Posted on by John Yunker

Martin Duerst pointed out a global gateway that has to be a first of its kind, shown below:

absint_gateway.jpg

What isn’t obvious in the photo is that these flags are actually animated GIFs that iterate through a selection of flags. When your flag appears, you select it and you’ll be taken to your specific country Web site.

This is not the type of gateway I would recommend. Flags are almost always a bad idea – since they don’t scale well and they also are not directly related to language in some cases. And the animated GIFs make it particularly challenging to arrive at your particular country. Nevertheless, I love to see the new and creative ways that companies tackle global navigation.

You can check out the gateway yourself here.

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Written by John Yunker

John is co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of The Web Globalization Report Card.

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Tags: Web Globalization