> Also, it's a bad practice to associate flags with languages
There's even a website for this issue
http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-re...
There's even a website for this issue
http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-re...
- :us-flag: United States [USD]
- :ca-flag: Canada (English) [CAD]
This is such a basic UX rule that I'm a bit surprised to see them fumble on it...
- Canadians from Quebec may prefer the site in french (but use CAD as a currency and see Canada's taxes where relevant).
- Expats in Thailand very much prefer to use the site in English.
- I'm in Spain and my browser is setup to reflect my preferences (Catalan first, English if that's not available, Spanish last). I prefer English to Spanish because international companies either have a strong presence here (and will probably have Catalan as an option) or their Spanish translation will be worse than the original language in English which I understand better than low effort translations.
Frame.work is going for a locale selector but they don't even support all the official locales of the regions they already operate in (e.g.: they don't support fr_CA). Even if they did, there are always users that would prefer a "non-official" localization (en_TH, en_ES following my examples above).
In the end they would be much better off letting users pick the language, region and currency separately. It's less effort from their part and a better solution for the users.
In that case, flags for languages are bad and flags for regions are fine but can still rub against some users' feelings. Example: pro-independence Scots having to pick the UK flag. Is it really that terrible to have auto-complete and/or select fields for these 3 things?
The Hindi argument is not good, Hindi is the _official_ language of India. I work with people from various parts of India and they can all communicate with each other because thry all speak Hindu/English (usually a mixture in conversation), even if their main language is Malayalam.
There are issues with flags = languages (e.g. "Welsh": "Gaelic" for instance, or Switzerland (which one?), but for English/Spanish examples, they are not good ones to use
And to end this, just because there is a website for your issues doesn't mean it's correct. There is nothing preventing someone from making a website called flagsarelanguages.com and having poo counter points to the original websites poo arguments. Appeal to authority nonsense.
Hindi, not Hindu. Also, Hindi is not the only official language of India.