Localization - Automating Button Text + Button Width

[Robert Cramer]

I'm looking to "internationalize" a new ASP.NET application (.NET 3.5) and
I'm considering various localization issues. In particular, the default
languagte will be English, but when localizing for some cultures, the text
will of course be longer than the English equivalent.

With respect to "buttons" (gif/jpeg files) in particular - rather than
storing buttons for each culture, I was wanting to know if a reasonable
alternative (in terms of functionality and performance) would be to store
the button text per culture, and then insert the correct text into a button
at runtime - adjusting the width of the button (gif/jpeg) as necessary. The
final setup I'm considering is (1) having a bunch of gif/jpg files that
serve as "button templates" - and then (2) at runtime, modify the gif/jpg
file so as to insert the requisite text, per the desired language into the
button before sending it down to the browser.

This assumes the layout of the pages could gracefully handle the varying
widths of the buttons. The languages to be supported include English/US (the
default), German, and French.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Thanks!

 

[bruce barker]

its a fine approach.

the only downside is the performance. asp.net is an order of magnitude
slower then iis for serving up images. also the .net graphics library is
single threaded in several parts (you may not hit) and can cuase more
slowups.

if you are not a high volume site this does not matter.

a compromise would be a build step, that generated the button images
from the resource strings. best of both worlds.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)