Traditional and SMTP emails out of php’s main mail() function will often be ignored, it seems, by Hotmail (and sometimes yahoo) if the email contains character without specific mention of the correct character set. It’s irritating as every other carrier seems to just deal with it but Hotmail (and sometimes yahoo) just act like no email ever existed, there’s no bounce-back, no spam folder message – just nothing.

In any case, set the header of your email to contain the character set, and if the email your sending is html then make sure you include that in the email body meta, seems obvious but is annoyingly easy to forget.

e.g. Add this line to whatever headers you are using:

$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8\r\n";

The post Hotmail and Character Sets: Make Sure Your Emails Get There first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Javascript – Using JS to find Browser Country / Location not from IP Photo by ToastyKen

Common solutions to identifying a users locale/localizing/localising a web client:

Using PHP / ASP.NET take the users IP and feed into an ip to location service (geo ip) to find a country from ip.
Pro’s: Server-side off the bat, can cache a database of IP’s (although would you?)
Con’s: Adds another 2 hops to at least initial page load, IP location service’s can cost or be faulty

Using the request headers (again server-side) to identify an “accepted language” and then guestimating their location (taking en-US…for example.)
Pro’s: Server-side to start with, no extra hops/calls required, this data is already available whether you use it or not, more useful for language (although limited)
Con’s: Unreliable – mostly because of a few of the BIG browsers default to en-US for all english users, often international users might learn to use a browser in English anyway – defeating the point

Another solution (work in progress:)

A step towards a proper solution, and in my case a solution for MY original problem, is to at least work out their TIMEZONE. What? I hear you say, why the timezone? Well if you know, for example using analytics data, that your user base is 40% US, 50% UK and 10% rest of the world you can at least make a START by dealing with the two major constituents of your audience. I can envisage A more complete solution though, by combining the use of request headers accepted language AND the following Javascript timezone detection:

Searching around a bit I found this which showed a lot of promise. This javascript works out the users Operating System time offset, and from that you can define which timezone they are in. Useful, if like me you know your users in a specific timezone are likely to be in one country, not particularly if they are possibly in multiple countries within a timezone.

A solution / exploration – location detection in javascript

The following Javascript gives you both indicators, using navigator.language/systemlanguage it detects the browser’s language, and then using an expanded upon version of the above script it will provide you with the possible countries from the users OS timezone offset. How useful this is to you is depending on the application, but check it out – build some fantastic solution off of it, then show me, because I probably won’t get round to it!

var langCode = navigator.language || navigator.systemLanguage;
var lang = langCode.toLowerCase(); lang = lang.substr(0,2);

var dateObject = new Date(); //this timezone offset calc taken from http://unmissabletokyo.com/country-detector.html
var timeOffset = - dateObject.getTimezoneOffset() / 60; 
var c = ""; //this will ultimately end up as a country/csv of possible countries
switch (timeOffset) { //I expanded upon this switch, adding all the possible countries
	case 0: 
	 c = 'Algeria, Ascension Island, Burkina Faso, Faeroe Islands, Ghana, Guinea Republic, Iceland, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Morocco, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, St Helena, The Gambia, Togo, United Kingdom'; break;
	
	case 1: 
	 c = 'Albania, Andorra, Angola, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Congo, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), Denmark, Equatorial Guinea, France, Gabon, Germany, Gibraltar, Guam, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macedonia (Fyrom), Malta, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia'; break;
	 
	case -1: 
	 c = 'Cape Verde Islands, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Guinea Bissau, USA'; break;
	 
	case 11:	
	 c = 'New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu'; break;
	 
	case -11:
	 c = 'Niue Island, Samoa (American), Samoa (Western), USA'; break;
	 
	case 11.5:
	 c = 'Norfolk Island'; break;
	 
	case 12:	
	 c = 'Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Tuvalu, Wallis & Futuna Islands'; break;
	 
	case 13:
	 c = 'Tonga'; break;
	 
	case 2:	
	 c = 'Botswana, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), Egypt, Finland, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Lithuania, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Palestine, Romania, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Turkey, Zambia, Zimbabwe'; break;
	 
	case 3:
	 c = 'Bahrain, Belarus, Comoros Island, Djibouti, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, latvia, Madagascar, Mayotte Islands, Moldova, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, Yemen Arab Republic'; break;
	 
	case -3:
	 c = 'Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Greenland, Guyana, Uruguay'; break;
	
	case 3.5:
	 c = 'Iran'; break;
	
	case -3.5:
	 c = 'Surinam'; break;
	
	case 4:
	 c = 'Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Mauritius, Oman, Reunion Island, Seychelles, United Arab Emirates'; break;
	
	case -4:
	 c = 'Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Dominica Islands, Dominican Republic, Falkland Islands, French Guiana , Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, St Kitts & Nevia, St Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, Venezuela'; break;
	
	case 5:
	 c = 'Diego Garcia, Maldives Republic, Pakistan, Turkmenistan'; break;
	
	case -5:
	 c = 'Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, Columbia, Ecuador, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Peru, Turks & Caicos Islands, USA'; break;
	
	case 5.5:
	 c = 'Bhutan,India,Nepal,Sri Lanka'; break;
	
	case 6:
	 c = 'Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan'; break;
	
	case -6:
	 c = 'Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, USA'; break;
	
	case 6.5:
	 c = 'Myanmar (Burma)'; break;
	
	case 7:
	 c = 'Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam'; break;
	
	case -7:
	 c = 'Canada, Mexico, USA'; break;
	
	case 8:
	 c = 'Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan'; break;
	
	case -8:
	 c = 'Canada, Mexico, USA'; break;
	
	case 9:
	 c = 'Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, North, Korea, South, Palau'; break;
	
	case -9:
	 c = 'USA'; break;
}

//at this point Lang should be a 2 letter language code (e.g. en), timeOffset will be the users hour offset from GMT and c will be the csv of possible countries!
alert('Lang: ' + lang + "\r\n" + 'timeOffset: ' + timeOffset + "\r\n" + 'Possible Countries: ' + "\r\n" + c);

You can get the full source for this zipped here, included is a minified version wrapped in a function, isn’t that nice of me? Use it as you will, and if you create something epic, show me!

Countries/timezones: I built the timezone offset switch based on the wikipedia list of countries and their timezones, so its comprehensive.

The post IP to Location Alternative: Javascript – Using JS to find Browser Country / Location not from IP first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.