Signatures: Anyone else prefer seeing languages written out instead of the flags? | General discussion | Forum
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21:01
July 17, 2011
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I hate to be the one that goes against the grain here, but am I the only one who has problems identifying a language by its flag. Also, there are languages that span multiple countries, and it seems a bit unfair to represent a language by the flag of one nation.
I suppose it's good to get accustomed to the flags (for future use in pub trivia!) but it would be great if everyone wrote their languages out beside the icons as well.
21:58
moderator
June 1, 2009
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Gives the forum more personality 
Wasn't my idea at all, but several people started doing it so I rolled with it and made it myself and wrote the brief how-to to help others.
Some people will be confused (in which case they should go and learn what the flag is; a little education never hurt!) and some people will get annoyed (about once a month I get an email from an angry Portuguese guy/girl demanding that I replace my Brazilian flag on the blog with a Portuguese one to represent the language). But people will always get annoyed – that's what they do.
Other forums are pure text for language lists and I was very glad to see how visual this one has become. Keep in mind that in an international world, working with images is very important and I personally prefer things to remain visual. The fact that the list of languages must be in English could be equally annoying. Flag-based signatures also help the flow even more in non-English forums to remain non-English.
I like that it's a definite choice of a country. Rather than learning "English", people should just pick a bloody flag and be sure that they are learning the American dialect or British (or other) dialect. If people want to write the language name beside the flag too then they should, but I won't be doing that myself.
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22:05
July 12, 2011
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I am definitely a fan for the flags. I feel it helps me recognize flags I originally didn't know (even though most of them are well-known like the British, Russian, etc. flags) and if you use just one country's flag for a language that spans multiple countries then maybe they are just learning that dialect or something. I also find that very interesting; to see who is learning what dialect. Sometimes using both words and flags can seem kind of messy to me depending on what words are used. But in the end, it isn't all that big of a deal to me.
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05:29
July 12, 2011
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I use both. Being on other forums that only show the text, I like the change and I feel it adds more to the signature. That said there nothing that says you have to use flags. Also, after the first few times of seeing the flag and looking it up you'll know it and then you won't even notice a problem! :)
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16:09
June 29, 2011
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Another way to do that I use : when you hover a flag in my signature, the name of the language appears. I used this code : <acronym title="name of the language here">The flag here</acronym>
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19:42
July 5, 2011
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Great Idea.
I'm fine with using just one flag to represent a language which actually is spoken in multiple countries. Actually it's better because it gives you an idea of the dialect.
But I faced a problem when I had to deal with several languages from the same country. (Indian languages in my case). So I had to use the names too. I'll replace it with hover over text. That's far better in my opinion.
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22:10
July 17, 2011
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frapy said:
Another way to do that I use : when you hover a flag in my signature, the name of the language appears. I used this code : <acronym title="name of the language here">The flag here</acronym>
Perfect! Everyone should do this, it's a great idea.
12:08
moderator
June 1, 2009
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Acronym! Wasn't even aware of that html code I'll add it to the how-to. Thanks!
Learning:
14:09
June 28, 2011
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That's a great idea, although you can also just add the title= attribute to the <img> tag without using acronym. just kidding it automatically removes it for some reason.
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19:32
Experienced Language Hacker
July 22, 2011
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I'm definitely an advocate of having the flag pictures in the signatures. Makes the forum look that much more colourful! I've only recently joined the forum and am in the process of deciding if I prefer hover over text or names written beside the flags… Hmm…!
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