Could someone please explain this to me?

Hey again folks!

I'm not sure if this thread is appropriate for this forum, but I will post it anyway. Well, I've just been wondering for some time now how a website with the address http://www.address.com/?page=home&lang=eng works? This is just an example, and I wondered if anyone could explain to me the structure of the website, and how it can be done. The reason why I'm asking this is because I'm making a website, that will be available in three different languages, and therefor this might be useful.

Thanks!


~Jan

Hi Jan,

When Your question is: language depending web-site

Take a look at www.dynamicdrive.com they have a so called language-sniffer

Jerome

Well, just for a general view, note that there must be a script that understand the info passed after the question mark and executes some functions or redirect the users based on that.

Usually, that is a job for server side scripts (PHP, ASP, CGI).

JS also understand what's after the "?", via the search property of the object location . You can access it like this:


<script language="JavaScript">

if (window.location.search == 'lang=en')
{
text = english_text;

/*you defined the variable english_text earlier to contain the english version of text*/

}

else
{
text = polish_text;

/*you defined the variable polish_text earlier to contain the polish version of text*/
}



document.write(text);

</script>
...



/* That's just a very simple example of how you can use JS for
such a think like language change. Your link to the english version of the site will look like this:

http://www.adres.com?lang=en



The script above may save some work for you (you won't have to make a version of your html files for each language you use).

If you have a lot of languages, use PHP instead; otherwise the user will have to wait until the ful text for ALL your languages load, so the script can pick the right one.

See ya.