Suggestion: Persist language selection

[mt-webdev]

Summary

Unfortunately, the language selection is not being persisted, which means on every visit I have to reselect my wanted language (which is English)

Where did you spot the bug?

Literally any site:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/querySelector

What is the problem?

The site is currently not able to persist in the user/session settings.

What did you expect to happen?

Once I revisit the site I would like to memorize my language selection ( & theme as well, but less of a bummer)

Steps to reproduce the issue

1. Open https://developer.mozilla.org/... in Chrome
2. use the language selector on the top right opposite of the breadcrumbs.
3. close the site
4. a couple of hours/days later re-visit

Environment

Device

• [x ] Desktop

Browser

• [ x] Chrome: 98.0.4758.109

Operating system

• [ x] Mac OS: 12.2.1

[schalkneethling]

Unfortunately, the language selection is not being persisted, which means on every visit I have to reselect my wanted language (which is English)

I am guessing you mean when leaving MDN and later returning via a search result? It seems to work fine if you change the language and navigate around MDN. Thank you for reporting @mt-webdev

[caugner]

@mt-webdev Would it be a solution for you to make English the preferred language in your Chrome settings?

And if not, why not?

[mt-webdev]

@schalkneethling yes, that's also a scenario where it's changing my preferences. (visit via Search-Engines)
@caugner I would like to keep my browser settings as-is.

[caugner]

@mt-webdev Just to understand: Can you elaborate on why you like to keep your browser preferring a different language than you actually prefer? Are there other sites that would then appear in English, although you prefer them in the language currently preferred by your browser?

(Note that, at least in Firefox, you can have the browser UI in one language and still prefer a different language.)

[schalkneethling]

@mt-webdev Would it be a solution for you to make English the preferred language in your Chrome settings?

And if not, why not?

I believe the problem is that the reader wants to have MDN Web Docs always in English. If they change the setting in Chrome, then I believe all(or most) websites they visit will honour the selection and always show English content.

[schalkneethling]

@schalkneethling yes, that's also a scenario where it's changing my preferences. (visit via Search-Engines)

Yes, that is a problem we have not solved for. With that said, there is a rather old pull request that does address this:
#3968

We would need to pick this up again and get it merged but, we will have to speak with the product owner to set priority for when we do this work.

[apapsch]

English content is usually more up-to-date, hence the preference of English on MDN, whereas the browser is set to prefer another language. In the old MDN, the problem was solved eventually by making it easy to access the English page (a link in the top right corner, "Go to English page") and IIRC the choice was saved.

[schalkneethling]

English content is usually more up-to-date, hence the preference of English on MDN, whereas the browser is set to prefer another language. In the old MDN, the problem was solved eventually by making it easy to access the English page (a link in the top right corner, "Go to English page") and IIRC the choice was saved.

I do not believe the choice was saved but yes, the quick link to English was useful to some folks. We can solve this problem by taking the following pull request across the finish line, so to speak. #3968

We will need to prioritise the work though. @HerminaC and @fiji-flo Thoughts?

[mt-webdev]

I never noticed this "issue" while using the previous MDN version. I am not sure why I end up on (in my case) german MDN sometimes... :-/

[NHerw]

Now that we also have MDN Plus in german speaking countries, can we save our preferred language in our mozilla account?

[schalkneethling]

@mt-webdev Thank you for starting this conversation. I have moved this to a discussion here: https://github.com/orgs/mdn/discussions/97