Answers the question: Should I use b and i elements?

The HTML5 specification redefines b and i elements to have some semantic function, rather than purely presentational. However, the simple fact that the tag names are ‘b’ for bold and ‘i’ for italic means that people are likely to continue using them as a quick presentational fix.

This article explains why that can be problematic for localization (and indeed for restyling of pages in a single language), and echoes the advice in the specification intended to address those issues.

By Richard Ishida, W3C.

Comments are being sought on the article Using <b> and <i> tags prior to final release. Please send any comments to www-international@w3.org (subscribe). We hope to publish a final version in one week.

This checker performs various tests on a Web Page to determine its level of internationalisation-friendliness. It also lists key internationalization settings related to character encoding, language declarations, text direction and class/id names. This information includes HTTP headers, which can be particularly useful for troubleshooting problems.

The checker is still only a prototype, so there are guaranteed to be bugs and missing features. It will slowly improve over the coming months, but it has been made available for use now since it is likely to be helpful to many people already.

Use the checker

Thanks to the Trusted Translations, Inc., the following articles have been translated into both European and Brazilian Portuguese.

Definir a codificação em aplicações de autorização web / Como definir a codificação em aplicativos de criação web (Setting encoding in web authoring applications)
Utilizando entidades de caracteres e NCRs / Uso de entidades de caracteres e NCRs (Using character entities and NCRs)
Conjunto de caracteres do documento / Conjunto de caracteres do documento (Document character set)

On 6th May Richard Ishida gave a talk entitled Internationalization & its challenges at the Technology, Standards and Internationalization Conference that was run to mark the opening of the W3C India Office in New Delhi, India.

The talk describes the work of the Internationalization Activity at the W3C, and ways in which people in South Asia can contribute to that work.

The HTML and CSS text direction tests in the Internationalization Activity test suite have been updated as follows:

• HTML5 and XHTML5 were added as new test formats
• tests now use strict DOCTYPEs
• reference graphics in the vertical text tests were improved
• the order of tests related to browser chrome was changed

In addition, a new results page was created for the tests about vertical text.

Other changes behind the scenes include gathering of all tests into a single PHP file (generatehtml.php is no longer used). Code in the PHP file was also streamlined.

Thanks to the Bhavatmaj Seth, the following getting-started article has been translated into Hindi.

वेब पर भाषा (Language on the Web)

Thanks to the Spanish Translation Team, Spanish Translation US, the following articles have been translated into Spanish.

Etiquetas que no están en inglés (Non-English tags)
Ruby (Ruby)
Estilo y etiquetado de ruby (Ruby Markup and Styling)

Thanks to the Bhavatmaj Seth, the following article has been translated into Hindi. This is the first translation of an Internationalization Activity article into Hindi.

परिचय कैरेक्टर समूह और कूटबन्धन (Introducing Character Sets and Encodings)

The CSS webfonts tests in the Internationalization Activity test suite have been updated as follows:

• a set of WOFF font tests were added
• HTML5 and XHTML5 were added as a new test formats
• tests now use strict DOCTYPEs
• results pages were consolidated and updated to reflect latest browser version behaviour, and to make it easier to see the assertions used for the tests