I'm doing some testing around localization to try to understand it better, but am getting some unexpected results, which I hope someone can explain to me.
I have a site with content localization enabled, with two languages: English (GB) as default, and Spanish (ES). The site is configured to detect browser language preference. The site has one page with one (HTML) module. I have translated the page and module content into Spanish, and have published the page. All users can view the page. My browser (FireFox) has en-GB set as it's preferred language. The site skin is the Minimum Extropy default.
Now, while I am still logged on (as a host admin), the language selector is displayed, and I can use it to switch between the two different versions of the page content. However, the static content remains stubbornly in English. I know this "feature" was "by design" in v5.5.0, but I was hoping that by 5.5.1 that design decision would have been reversed so that the whole page, static and dynamic would display in the same language.
However, leaving that aside for the moment, I wanted to find out what determined the language of the static content. I understood it to be the browser language preference while the user is logged in. So I changed my browser language preference to Spanish (Spain). But, the static parts of the page still remained in en-GB.
Finally, if I log off, I would expect to see the page displayed initially according to the browser language settings, and to have the ability to switch between languages using the language selector. Not the case. When I log off, the page is displayed in Spanish, there no language selector. The page is displayed in Spanish even if I change my browser language preference back to English.
Some questions to sum up:
- what's the rationale behind not switching the static content language with the language selector? Is there one?
- for a logged on user, what controls the language of static content? Surely it's not the site default language, as it appears. Clearly not all logged on users are going to have the same language preference
- what has happened to the language selector for an unauthenticated user?
- if browser language preference doesn't determine the display language for an unauthenticated user, what does?