10 – 12 APRIL 2005 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia10 – 12 APRIL 2005 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Building multi-lingual ASP.Net application that handle western languages and Arabic

with a single code base.

Building multi-lingual ASP.Net application that handle western languages and Arabic

with a single code base.

Abdellatif TarhineMicrosoft Regional Director for North Africa

Atarhine@Netopia-Solutions.com

AgendaAgendaInternationalizing Your Application

What's New in APS.NET 2.0

Culture-sensitive Formatting

LocalizationResource Expressions

Local and Global Resources

Implicit Expressions to Local Resources

Explicit Expressions to Local Resources

Programmatic Access to Global Resources

Localizing Static Content

Storing Language Preferences

ASP.NET 2.0 Localization Features ASP.NET 2.0 Localization Features

More tools built in to the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 environment.

New runtime capabilities.

Rich new programming API specifically targeting localization requirements.

Specifying Cultures Specifying Cultures

How do you specify a culture?

there is an Internet standard called RFC 1766 that specifies codes for cultures

ar-SA—Arabic - Saudi Arabia

en-GB—English—United Kingdom

en-US—English—United States

fr-FR—French - France

zh-CN—Chinese - China

the first part (lower case) specifies the language, and the second part (upper case) specifies a country or region

CurrentUICulture & CurrentCulture CurrentUICulture & CurrentCulture

CurrentUICulture—specifies the culture for the user interface and is used for resource file lookups.

CurrentCulture—specifies the culture for data and information. It is used to format dates, numbers, currencies and sort strings

how these settings work?how these settings work?

<%=System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread. CurrentUICulture.ToString()%>

<%=System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread. CurrentCulture.ToString()%>

What's New in APS.NET 2.0What's New in APS.NET 2.0

Auto Detection of Browser Language

Declarative Localization Expressions

Generating Local Resources

Culture-sensitive FormattingCulture-sensitive Formatting

Setting a Preferred Language in Internet Explorer

Auto-detecting the browser language for culture-sensitive formatting

<%@ Page Culture="auto:ar-SA" %>

LocalizationResource Expressions LocalizationResource Expressions

There are two forms of resource expressions, explicit and implicit:

Explicit

<%$ Resources:[filename prefix,]resource-key %>

Implicit

<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" meta:resourcekey="resource-key-prefix" />

LocalizationExplicit Expressions to Local ResourcesLocalizationExplicit Expressions to Local Resources

Explicit localization expressions provide a way to declaratively assign specific resource entries to server control properties and other HTML elements

<asp:ImageButton id="btnIDesign" Runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/idesignlogo.jpg" AlternateText='<%$ Resources: MissionSatatement, "IDesign Inc." %>' PostBackUrl="http://www.idesign.net" meta:resourcekey="ImageButtonResource1" />

LocalizationExplicit Expressions to Local ResourcesLocalizationExplicit Expressions to Local Resources

Developers can create explicit expressions through the Properties window just as they would set other control properties

LocalizationImplicit Expressions to Local ResourcesLocalizationImplicit Expressions to Local Resources

The default behavior is for an implicit localization expression to be added to server controls, indicated by the parse-time attribute meta:resourcekey.

<asp:LinkButton id=lnkSelectCulture PostBackUrl="selectculture.aspx" runat="server" meta:resourcekey="LinkButtonResource1"> Change Culture Settings</asp:LinkButton>

LocalizationLocal and Global ResourcesLocalizationLocal and Global Resources

Global resources:Reside in a specialized folder called /App_GlobalResources

at the root of the application

Local resources:defined in a peer-level /App_LocalResources folder

LocalizationGenerating Local ResourcesLocalizationGenerating Local Resources

ASP.NET 2.0 provides a simple way to automatically generate resources for Web pages

Generate Local Resource from the Tools menu in Visual Studio 2005

Web Forms, user controls, and master pages can all be internationalized from within Visual Studio .NET 2.0. This particular view shows default resources generated for several pages.

LocalizationLocalizing HTML ElementsLocalizationLocalizing HTML Elements

HTML Controls cannot participate in the benefits of implicit or explicit expressions unless they are run on the server (runat="server").

In fact the HTML page title element is special because it is also a Page property that can be set through the @Page directive.

<%@ page title="Global Welcome" meta:resourcekey="pageTitle" %>

explicit expression that draws the value from shared resources instead

of local resources

<%@ page title='<%$ resource:Glossary, DefaultPageTitle, "Global Welcome" %>' %>

LocalizationDirectional AttributesLocalizationDirectional Attributes

To control the directionality of the browser's scrollbars and set the overall directionality of the site, this explicit expression pulls correct value from shared resources, and uses a designer default, "LTR":

<html runat="server" dir='<% $Resources: Direction, "LTR" %>' >

...

</html>

LocalizationStatic TextLocalizationStatic Text

A new ASP.NET Localize control is provided to mark static content as localizable

<asp:Localize runat="server" meta:resourcekey="welcome">Welcome!</asp:Localize>

<asp:Localize runat="server" text='<%$ resources: Glossary, welcomeText%>'>Welcome!</asp:Localize>

LocalizationResource Localization and DeploymentLocalizationResource Localization and Deployment

New declarative statements, automatic generation of page resources, and the presence of strongly-typed shared resources collectively make it much easier for developers to prepare Web applications for localization

LocalizationPreferred Culture SelectionLocalizationPreferred Culture Selection

ASP.NET 2.0 introduces a new feature to automate culture selection at runtime based on Web browser preferences. The @Page directive, which also supports culture and UI culture settings, can be used to indicate that a particular page should be run based on the browser preferences:

<%@ Page uiCulture="auto" culture="auto">

LocalizationPreferred Culture SelectionLocalizationPreferred Culture Selection

The web.config file for the application can also apply this setting for the entire application

<system.web> <globalization culture="auto:en-US" uiCulture="auto:en">

</system.web>

The colon after auto allows you to specify a default culture if the event HTTP headers are not available. Since culture must be set to a specific culture, the example above shows en-US as the culture.

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