Once again I’m calling out Research in Motion for being web idiots. How can a Canadian company still not have a French version of their own site in Canada and yet have a Spanish version in the States and a French only site in France.
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Yeah, ‘cuz what would the French keyboard look like?!
Don’t even get me started on the freakin’ keyboard issue.
This is how a Canadian company goes about slapping every single North American French speaker in the face. With a GOD DAMN AZERTY Keyboard… Big FAIL for RIM on this one.
Then Apple strikes out as well, as they basically provide the same (dare i say identical on-screen user interface). If you hold on the “e” character, it provides all options for accents. As to why the AZERTY, you got me…
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Correction, the above is true for iPhone with French keyboard, French-Canadian is standard QWERTY, with same behaviour on the accents as mentioned.
Where are the accents?!
Does Canuck law really require a web site to be bilingual? I know Quebec law requires web sites to be in French if they sell to Quebecers. And there were a couple public cases a few years back where the companies just said “okay, we don’t have any Quebec customers anyways.”
You have to hold the key down for the accents, BlackBerry was actually doing this before the Jesus Phone. But no one outside Paris has ever used an AZERTY keyboard.
If you sell in Quebec you have to offer a French version of your site. RIM definitely sell their BlackBerry’s in Quebec. Besides the Official Languages law, it’s just good business sense not to piss off your customers or frustrate them with your own ignorant stupidity. Considering most of the Quebec National Assembly are Crackberry addicts, I’m surprised this has never been an issue debated in Parliament.
I believe that Canuck law forces bilingual onto anything publicly run. As for corporate web sites, I believe that they must have a french presence in order to address the Quebec market, although I can’t imagine the enforcement, other than financial penalties (followed by an immediate recall of all Quebec civil servant’s blackberries, effectively freezing government…).
Could be worse, they could have implemented the QWERTZ keyboard, assuming than French-Canadian was the same as Swiss-German…
While they’re at it why not go with thew Alpha keyboard, ABCDEF…
Or better yet, have the users use the numeric keypad of a phone to type words! I pity every soul that has or is doing that. I’ve been spared from that nightmare.
One does wonder WTH they were thinking by not building a French version of ther Canadian website.. wow
Adi
[...] methods after I had openly blasted RIM, a Canadian company, for providing us French users with an AZERTY keyboard from France and not the QWERTY keyboard we’ve all been using since the keyboard was invented. [...]