Select language is not persistent enough

[kelson42]

If I pick French in language selector at https://library.kiwix.org/viewer#ted_mul_blockchain_2024-06/, then it works. But if I click on the topbar button to go to the homepage of my ZIM, the Inloose my language selection, it should not.

[benoit74]

This information is stored in a query parameter, so definitely not persistent at all.

I think we should store this information:

• ideally in a kind of browser store
  • local storage ? cookie ?
  • I'm not sure what is going to work properly on the various readers we have
• at least in a URL fragment (easy, and more resilient than the query parameter which is known to be dropped by kiwix-serve for instance)
  • this is pretty easy to implement and allows to not loose the information when navigating the site (currently when we click the "TED" logo we trick the thing by going back in the navigator history ... which is working only because it is not yet possible to navigate from one video to the next one)
  • but this does not help to not loose the information when going back home with kiwix-serve button (and probably other buttons in other readers)

@rgaudin do you have any information on which kind of storage should be used for proper operation across kiwix readers? Or should I create a test ZIM with this to confirm what is working?

[rgaudin]

Well without implementation spec/reqs, it's hard to know (I know I repeat myself).
I am not sure about the actual answer to your question. Clearly deserves assessment and documentation.
Cookie is the reglar safest over HTTP but on readers using a custom scheme it might not be enabled.
LocalStorage support is very wide and we use it already in nautilus across readers so that should be OK but there's no guarantee

[kelson42]

Cookies should work, otherwise this is a bug.

[benoit74]

Let's rely on local storage for now, see openzim/overview#39 (comment)