Reviews
Here's what people are saying about .NET Internationalization:-
Craig Murphy, posted on
CraigMurphy.com
, 13th August 2007
The longest review of .NET Internationalization ever - 4.5 stars out of 5. Click on the link to see the review.
Alex Homer, posted on
Amazon.com
, 18th March 2007
Everything you ever wanted to know.... 5 stars.
Like most English people, my multilingual capabilities extend to English, American,
and Shouting. But as I've increasingly worked at conferences across Europe, I've
become more aware at just how difficult it is for non-English speakers, and those
for whom English is not their first language. It's when you attend a conference
in somewhere like Austria, and all the sessions except yours are in German (de-AT
or de-DE) that you realize you have a long way to go to even start to support other
languages and cultures in your applications.
While I've tried hard to tailor my examples, by internationalizing them as far as
I can using the features of ASP.NET 2.0, this book opened my eyes to the huge number
of other issues that such "translated" applications actually face. It's then you
realize that, without a professional approach and solid information on the whole
gamut of gotchas involved, translating the text is just scratching the surface...
And that's why you really do need this book. It's packed with detailed, and often
"inside" information that spans every related topic area. It covers not only theory
and guidance on the best practical techniques, but tools and resources that can
help. In fact, the detail it contains is so thorough that you'll find yourself reading
some chapters over again to get to grips with the complex internal workings on .NET
and Windows. Yet it's written in a friendly, readable, and often amusing way that
makes perusing topics a pleasure as well as being informative.
Make no mistake, this is not a "read and remember" book. Be prepared to keep it
near to hand as a reference, as you'll need to study each chapter to grasp and apply
the techniques properly - and in enough depth - to make your application "world-ready".
And even if you only ever build applications in one language, it's worth reading
this book just to help you understand the internationalization features available,
and the how to get the best from .NET. You never know, one day you may have to build
a multi-language version of your Web site or Windows application...
Kathleen Dollard, posted on
Amazon.com
, 1st February 2007
An invaluable book. 5 stars.
I don't rave about books very often, but this book is worth the rave.
It's perhaps the best written hard-core technical book I've ever read, and one of
the few where I didn't skip half. Topics are correctly grouped and covered to an
appropriate depth with clear explanations of when and why you need specific features.
If you are not familiar with internationalization - the first part of the book covers
basics such as why a culture is needed and the fallback process.
If you think you know about .NET internationalization - you already know about cultures
and resource managers and localizable, but you've never actually localized an application,
the insight into the process - such as the value of pseudo translators will be very
helpful. It also covers a boatload of language nuances from the Turkish letter I
to non-cased languages.
I came to this book with an extremely difficult internationalization problem that
I thought we would have to kludge by walking controls on form load. This book went
deep enough into the internationalization customization points and pointed out a
critical trick I had not seen, that I am building a localization system that will
work for us. Instead of being kludged on top and parallel, this book showed me how
to leverage the .NET extensibility to solve the problem. I did not find enough information
on making the internationalization extensibility model actually work elsewhere.
I know a good bit about Winforms, the framework, and code generation and this book
is solid in the coverage of these topics. I learned things I didn't know, especially
that InitializeComponent code injection trick - which is also one of the best examples
of why business programmers might want to know a little about the CodeDOM (one way
to do code generation).
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in internationalization
in .NET, whether an introduction, rubber meets the road suggestions/experience,
or black belt insight into the extensibility points.
Rob Macdonald, posted on
Amazon.co.uk
,
24th December
2006
Very solid book on an oft-forgotten topic. 5 stars.
Really good books are not only well written and informative, they change the way
you think about things. I have accumulated a hotchpotch of information and half
truths about internationalisation over the years, but never set out to really understand
it, and its place in the development cycle. This book has allowed me to grasp internationalisation
properly, and exposed me to a wealth of eye-opening insights.
Yes, I expected to learn the difference between globalisation and localisation,
between left-to-right amd right-to-left languages, and between culture and UICulture.
However, I had never stopped to consider how different cultures perform alphabetic
sorting differently, or use different calendars. Smith-Ferrier's book not only started
me thinking about the world differently, but explained how, properly used, the .NET
Framework addresses many internationalisation issues transparently. I had no idea
this stuff was in there.
I particularly liked the differences between 1.1 and 2.0, the appropriate separation
of treatment for Web and Windows, the best practices, the road map, the attention
to detail and the obvious depth of knowledge behind each sentence this author has
written.
What's the point of buying yet another C# or ASP.NET book? It is refreshing to find
such a good book on a topic on which few write seriously.
Dave A., posted on
Amazon.com
, 9th November 2006
Awesome. 5 stars.
This is actually one of the best technical books that I have read in a long time.
It is to the point, it does not reiterate, it is well considered in its structure
and it elegantly covers the topic from the beginner to the advanced.
Ian Elliot,
Visual Systems Journal,
27th October 2006
Pros: A good introduction to the problem
Cons: None
Verdict: :-))
The full review is on page 46 of the November 2006 issue of Visual Systems Journal.
IT Professional, posted on
IT Professional
, 25th October 2006
Click on the link to see the review (it's on page 59).
Will Wagers, posted on
C# Online
, 23rd October 2006
Click on the link to see the review. 4.5 stars out of 5.
Chris Myhill, posted on
Amazon UK,
20th October 2006
When I sat down with a copy of ‘.NET Internationalization: The Developer's Guide
to Building’ by Guy Smith-Ferrier I was sure that if Guy writes in the same style
he presents then I would be in for a great read, although I was dubious about this
as writing styles and presenting styles can differ greatly.
I am glad to say that I was not at all disappointed, the layout and flow of each
section and chapter of his book was logical and lead me through the process of understanding
the issues around internationalisation and the implementation of an application
which would appeal to a global market. The flow of the book was so good that I found
myself reading chapter after chapter without feeling overwhelmed with information
or left with more questions than answers.
Not only does the book cover every aspect of internationalising Windows and ASP.NET
applications and the impact different languages have on the design of an application,
Guy has even taken the time to explain the intricacies of how the framework handles
an environment where the displayed language can change. Like any good author Guy
has even taken the time to back up his knowledge by supplying you with tools to
ease this part of the development process.
If like me you have been wary if internationalisation and hoped that someone else
will deal with it or have implemented a solution you ‘think’ should work, I suggest
that you lock yourself away and read this book before you go any further.
Guy is one of a few experts in this field and this is evident by the amount and
quality of information provided on a topic which is misunderstood by many. Armed
with this book I feel I can now lead my development team in the pursuit of creating
internationalised applications.
Tom Duff, posted on
Duffbert's Random Musings
and
Amazon US
, 4th October 2006
Click on the link to see the review.
Martin Peck, posted on
Amazon UK,
29th August 2006
A Must Have For .NET Developers
If you're serious about developing .NET applications then you should read this book to get yourself up to speed on how you might make your apps ready for shipping across the world. Even if you never intend shipping your applications outside of your home country it'll give you an insight into the issues and challenges that you might face should you later change your mind.
The book covers .NET 1.1 and 2.0, showing how the .NET 2.0 Framework make internationalization a whole lot easier.
Developers will get a lot from this book, but it'll also prove really useful for everyone on a delivery team - testers, project managers etc. It will give non-developers an insight into the efforts involved in making an application work in many languages, and will help non-developers plan accordingly.
The book is well written, and very easy to read. It's a good technical book with plenty of good samples and walk throughs.
This is one of those books that all .NET developers should have access to.