Version française disponible

This is not a native feature of WordPress, fortunately, a free plugin qTranslate is existing. Unfortunately, the plugin activation only will not make everything and you will have to go further than that.

User reviews on qTranslate are quite mixed. When installing the plugin, most users hope to have nothing (or almost nothing) to configure. Then, they often complain when they realize that it does not work as they would expect (and give a bad score).

WordPress is constantly evolving with thousands of plugins available. Thus, it is impossible to achieve the perfect multilingual plugin that can handle everything through a single interface, and all of that without a single compatibility issue. It would be a dream, and I remind you that qTranslate is free…

Multilingual theme & plugins or nothing

First, if your theme does not support multiple languages (i.e. includes several language files and supporting the transition from one to another), it is not even needed to go further. You have two choices:

• Either change your theme with a newer one that manages it
• Either make your theme multilingual (in case it is your own theme, you should know how to do and go back into your code will not be that hard).

Also, if you use dozens of “exotic” plugins, there is a good chance that you will have some compatibility issues with qTranslate. I suggest you limit your site to fifteen plugins that are widely used. This is particularly true for the essential ones. By essential, I mean that your site cannot work correctly if you disable them.

A famous plugin with a good rating (it normally goes hand in hand) will ensure that:

• It is followed (bugfixes and updates available when there is new version of WordPress)
• You have some support (there is probably a user who had the same problem as you before)
• It is multilingual. Making a multilingual plugin is possible, but if you can avoid this, that’s better!

You can consult the list of plugins that I use on my own site. They are all working with qTranslate, are known and have good ratings for the most part.

If your theme and your plugins are multilingual, you will see that when switching of language, the whole system will be affected. For example, the Jetpack configuration interface or the WordPress administration dashboard will adapt…

Translation management from the WordPress dashboard

Post management is well integrated with qTranslate. You have as many fields as you have activated languages for both fields: title and content of each post. This is the same with category and tag sections.
qTranslate allows you to enable as many languages as you want. In my case, I enabled English and French. There are two languages so all translatable fields are duplicated.

Edit a post with qTranslate enabled

While most information is translated automatically, this is not the case for all existing information that I had to fill in at the creation of the blog.
I can use a tag provided by qTranslate to add my own translations, for example [:code_lang_1]My text in language 1[:code_lang_2]My text in language 2.

For example, here is the new value for the site tagline that appears at the top:

Change the tagline depending on the language

Similarly, you have to change as much as possible all titles, descriptions… all the texts appearing on the site but not translated yet. Here is a non-exhaustive list (will mainly depend on your plugins):

• The site tagline
• The title of some widgets
• The description of each site links
• The line about the author on RSS post feed (WordPress SEO)
• The text used in the views counter (WP-PostViews)
• The text used in the page navigation (previous page, next, last…) (WP-PageNavi)
• Title and default text for the related posts (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – YARPP)

If you use the Contact Form 7 plugin, don’t forget to create as many contact forms as your site supports different languages.

Advanced translation management (source code)

You have done all possible changes and little tweaks from the administration interface, but you realize that there are still a few things to improve to make your site completely multilingual.
In this case, there is no other choice but to dive into the PHP code and manually edit some files of WordPress, your theme or even some plugins. For example:

• Include the language code when building the RSS feed links
• Adding qTranslate language selector in the header of the theme
• Display different images in the theme according to the language
• Make plugins aware of the current language selected. Plugins such as Shadowbox, List category posts, WordPress SEO, Disqus, Social media icons…

For this last part, there is no secret, you must change the code by yourself and call new functions available when qTranslate is enabled.
Here is a code snippet to retrieve the language and set the text as appropriate.

if(function_exists('qtrans_getLanguage')) {
	$lang = qtrans_getLanguage();
	if ($lang == 'en')
		$text = 'english';
	else
		$text = 'french';
}

Be careful when you make some change to the code, be aware that an update will overwrite all your changes. So make sure to note ALL the changes you have done before updating WordPress, your theme or a plugin. If it becomes too difficult to maintain, it is a good idea to think about a system that integrates automatically your changes after an update. It’s up to you!

In many cases, you have certainly understood that you will need to go deeper and modify the source code of the incompatible plugins. This is needed to solve problems, but also to add some polish after a language switch in order to build the best user experience.

Over time, I guess you will finally realize that the hardest and tedious part is not to make a multilingual site, but to translate all your articles in all the languages you are supporting!

 Version française disponible

End of December, I received the Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas. Until now, I was a little ashamed to say that I was working in IT but had neither a smartphone on me nor a tablet at home. Actually, I survived until 2013 without psychological trauma…

I was always a bit attracted by the development of applications for mobile devices, but I never started. I didn’t own an Android device so the interest was quite limited though.

After the investigation of every detail of my Nexus, the exploration of all the available settings in Android and the installation of dozens of applications (I guess you better understand the topic of my previous article now), I needed to go further.

Happy coincidence early January, I came across the course “Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps” available on Coursera, the MOOC platform. I said to myself why not? So I enrolled! Actually, the course started 5 weeks ago, but it was still time to enroll thanks to a 2 week break planned for the Christmas holidays, I must admit I was a bit lucky. By working hard, I finally manage to catch up and complete four weeks in one (but I needed to put my personal life aside for a while between this and the usual work…). The course is relatively simple and is designed for beginners, those who are not necessarily developers, who have never written a line of Java or even read HTML code in their lives. It is not very complicated, but I realized I am learning a lot about Android. The teacher Lawrence Angrave is just excellent. He is making videos while he is on vacations in Antigua Guatemala, he invites people external to IT such as a young singer for a whole week, he gives details on computer history. In short, a lot of fun things that give a real interactivity to the course.

At the end of the week, students need to submit their work to complete the traditional assignments. This is the moment you have to get into the code and put what you learn into practice. There are two applications to achieve. The first app usually follows a set of precise instructions. The second is free so the candidate is not limited by the scope anymore, in fact the main limit is the knowledge. Coming from the Java world, the Android development is not too difficult to understand. Again, courses are very well explained, not too fast, making the learning fast.

Over the weeks, I found that Android development is quite good, it’s even fun! The development environment is well made, emulators for testing in different screen resolutions work quite well. You must have a good machine. Launching the development environment and Android emulators requires some power. Native multilanguage support is easy done. Unlike Web and desktop applications, it is much simpler and you are well guided. The official documentation is perfect and you will always find answers to your questions on Stackoverflow when you got stuck. The advantage of Android development is that there are not hundreds of frameworks to know, to master, to choose or need to compare. In addition, when you know that the majority of people now have an Android device, possibilities are huge!

However, I see one default: the creation of screens. It is done through layout.xml files. There are several files based on the size and screen resolution, but also the orientation (portrait or landscape mode). You can quickly end up managing many layout files. Especially when you want your application fits on all types of screen, from 4 to 10 inches. This is ok, but it is the layout creation itself that is quite laborious… just to align two buttons under a table, you need some time to figure out how to do it! There are many existing tags to position elements, you never know which one to use. At the end, I regret the good and old HTML/CSS code, even with a bit of Javascript. That’s my feeling.

For the second assignment on Coursera, I needed to think about a second application. I wanted something useful, something that motivates me enough. The first app was a screen with some favorite icons to open the browser and display the selected site. In short, something not very complicated, but completely useless.

Finally, I chose to develop an application to navigate on CarmaBlog, in a view suitable for mobile devices. It incorporates features of the site, coded natively in Android (i.e. available from the Android menu and not from the web pages).

So I introduce you CarmaBlog, my first “real” Android application, already in version 1.3.1 as I added some new features and fixed some bugs.
I did not rely on Google Play, I didn’t want to pay the registration fees for an application that will be installed by a very limited number of users (no doubt about it).

Installing an application outside of Google Play is very simple. Go to the options of your device. Select “Settings” -> “Security” or “Applications” -> then check “Unknown sources”.

To install CarmaBlog, download the “apk” file by clicking on the image or the link below, and then open it to begin the installation, that’s all. I encourage you to disable the option once you have finished the installation (just in case).

Below is a list of the main features:

• Pages are adapted for small screens. We keep the essential information only (i.e. post content)
• Faster navigation on pages already loaded (cache)
• Switch between French and English for the language of the posts
• It is possible to share an article on social networks from the menu
• Submenu allows quick access to the different categories of posts
• The search feature is also integrated into the menu
• Like the site, the application is available in French and English

Add CarmaBlog 1.3.1 by downloading the apk file

The application is not perfect for sure, but I’m pretty happy for a debut.

Here are some broadly technical explanations. The application consists of an Activity that uses a single WebView component that takes the whole screen (so I didn’t have to create a layout.xml file). I retrieve the content of a page with the jsoup library. Then, I display the retrieved content in the WebView. This data retrieving process is done asynchronously using the AsyncTask class. The cache system is rudimentary, it is a simple list that I clear when the user presses the back button (to avoid too much memory consumption).

If you are interested, the complete source code is available on Github. For example, you may be interested in the search and share features, because I use simple and native Android components. Do not hesitate to fork the code, to use it for your own website or share your ideas of improvement. I commented the code and try to extract specific code in utilities and constants classes (as much as possible, this is not always the case I have to admit).

Will I continue and expand my knowledge of Android programming? Will I build a new application? The future will tell me.

So far, the course is not finished and I’m following another one (yes!), “Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems”, this second course is more technical and aimed at developers. The course started on January 21th, so it is still time to enroll!

Anyway, I recommend people interested in Android development (but still hesitant to get started) to take a look at the courses, tutorials on the internet and try! It is still possible to register to the course of Lawrence Angrave. It is too late to participate in assignments and obtain a certificate of completion, but it will give you the access to all videos.

Don’t hesitate to take the plunge, although the water may seem a bit cold at first…