Link HREFLANG

By David Walsh on February 11, 2014

If you work on a website that is offered in more than one language, you deserve a medal. The need to localize almost everything is tough and sometimes feels very limiting. No adding text to imagery, never knowing how different translation will affect layout, maintaining different templates, etc. A very necessary task but damn, it can be tough.

Here's one easy part of localizing that's easy: adding link elements which reference alternate URLs per language. Here's how you'd use it:

<!-- Used on CNN -->
<link href="http://edition.cnn.com" hreflang="en-gb" rel="alternate" title="CNN International" type="text/html"/>
<link href="http://arabic.cnn.com" hreflang="ar" rel="alternate" title="CNN Arabic" type="text/html"/>
<link href="http://mexico.cnn.com" hreflang="es" rel="alternate" title="CNN Mexico" type="text/html"/>

<!-- Used on MDN -->
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ar" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ar/docs/Web/CSS" title="ورقة الأنماط الإنسيابية">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="bn-BD" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/bn-BD/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ca" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ca/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="cs" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/cs/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/es/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fa" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/fa/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="id" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/id/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/it/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ja/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ko" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ko/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="nl" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/nl/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pl" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pl/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-BR" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pt-BR/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-PT" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pt-PT/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ru/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="vi" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/vi/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-CN" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/zh-CN/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-TW" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/zh-TW/docs/CSS" title="CSS">

The code is very self-explanatory so I won't break it down, but it's something you should be adding when a page is available in more than one language.

Recent Features

By Chris CoyierAugust 13, 2013

Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos

David asked me if I'd be up for a guest post picking out some of my favorite Pens from CodePen. A daunting task! There are so many! I managed to pick a few though that have blown me away over the past few months. If you...

By David WalshApril 3, 2013

CSS @supports

Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS. What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix. Yuck. Another thing we...

Incredible Demos

By David WalshJuly 20, 2011

Instagram For MooTools

If you're still rocking an iPhone and fancy taking a photo every now and then, you'd be crazy not to be using an app called Instagram. With Instagram you take the photos just as you would with your native iPhone camera app, but Instagram...

By David WalshJanuary 20, 2009

MooTools: Set Style Per Media

I'd bet one of the most used MooTools methods is the setStyle() method, which allows you to set CSS style declarations for an element. One of the limitations of MooTools' setStyle() method is that it sets the specific style for all medias.