Deciphering International Forms

|

At work I’ve gotten quite adept at creating different user accounts for testing and reproducing bugs, especially for international. Not being able to read any language other than English, I usually use navigation tricks such as:

  • Copy and paste chunks of text into Babelfish
  • Follow along with the US/English flow in a separate browser

For cases where those tricks aren’t sufficient (for example, English vs Intl flows are different or have different fields), I’ve found a third option:

The web developer extension is considered a “must have” for anyone doing web development. In this case, I use the Forms | Display Form Details option to highlight all form field names. Each form field will be shown with its id and name. As long as either the id or name are meaningful (and in English), you can deduce what the field means. Worst-case, you could still translate text chunks in Babelfish if needed for anything tricky.

The screen shot below comes from the Yahoo! Hong Kong registration page (Traditional Chinese). With the fields highlighted in this manner, registration was easily finished.

Example showing form details on a Chinese web page

If you found this post interesting, you can subscribe to the RSS feed, receive updates by email, or follow me on twitter: @bcantoni.

Possibly related posts:

About

This is the personal website of Brian Cantoni. All opinions on this site are my own. Reach me by email: brian at cantoni.org.

Subscribe

Keep up to date with new content:

 Subscribe in a reader

 Subscribe by Email

Twitter

The latest tweets from @bcantoni:

RT @TheScienceGuy: Many thanks to the folks of @nytimes for their assistance in my mission to change the world. I am ever so grateful. http…
18 Jun 2013 04:02
@kentbrew just had the same thought while checking twitter to find out what's up
18 Jun 2013 00:43
European roaming charges will end in 2014 (Wired UK) http://t.co/pG1cK46fKL
17 Jun 2013 21:56
Encrypted e-mail: How much annoyance will you tolerate to keep the NSA away? | Ars Technica http://t.co/3PSwDQti60
14 Jun 2013 18:54
RT @edbott: If the NSA had a click-through user agreement for the Internet, it would probably look like this: http://t.co/VxBVYOONAm
12 Jun 2013 18:54
Connecting The PRISM Dots: My New Theory | Uncrunched http://t.co/2icNvu1XQP
12 Jun 2013 15:58
RT @twitterapi: Thanks everyone! API v1 Retirement is complete. Please use API v1.1 instead. https://t.co/SIzTAymJPW
12 Jun 2013 05:42
Interesting combos with @zapier - connect payment to sending digital goods >> The Ultimate Guide To Selling Downloads http://t.co/E7H2y8TMwk
12 Jun 2013 01:53
Some nice additions to Draft by @natekontny: Github-style Markdown Todos, WebHooks, REST API | http://t.co/xKt9bOiW1p
11 Jun 2013 21:56

Twitter Favorites

Your Twitter favorites delivered to your inbox: Tweetfave.com

Code Camp

CodeCamp Number 8 at FootHill College.

Archives

For older entries, please refer to the Archives.

Mobile Websites

Visit cantoni.mobi for a helpful list of mobile sites.