From the course: Localization for Developers

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Adapting your user interface

Adapting your user interface

From the course: Localization for Developers

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Adapting your user interface

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- In addition to supporting localized content, you're going to find out very quickly that your product's interface needs to make some allowances for other locales. One of the first things you might come across is the fact that many languages are just longer than English. A good rule of thumb is that your interface needs to support at least a 30% expansion in text length, though 50 or 60% would be much safer. Look, for example, at how simple menu items appear in English and in German. Some languages, and German is a good example of this, just have longer words, on average, than English does. Ideally, you want to have your UI elements respond to the size of their content so they can expand to the size they need to be. However, that can sometimes cause interface elements to get pushed off of your canvas or to wrap onto a new line. Or if your interface is very tightly designed, you may just run out of room, requiring you to scale font sizes down to fit content. But be aware that making…

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