Get World-Ready

Here are the 10 most valuable benefits you gain by making your product World-Ready upfront in the development process.

The benefits of developing world-ready software are many, including lower development costs and lower customer support costs. When your software is world-ready, it is much easier (and faster) to create new product versions in additional languages. In addition, the ease of updating world-ready software increases customer satisfaction.

If you are developing software for a specific language market -- including English -- why not plan and develop software for customers worldwide? The benefits of developing world-ready software are many, including lower development costs, lower test costs, and lower customer support costs. When your software is world-ready, you can create new product versions in additional languages without needing to re-engineer or recompile the source code. In addition, the ease of updating world-ready software increases customer satisfaction.

This article describes the issues you need to consider when writing specifications, when customizing features, as well as when designing the user interface and code for a single-binary, world-ready program. It also describes strategies for setting up a project team and a development environment, and gives tips regarding testing and translation issues. By familiarizing yourself with the concepts presented in this chapter before you begin your next software project, you will be on the right track towards creating a successful world-ready application.

This guide helps Developers, Program/Project Managers, and other IT Professionals understand what the issues are in creating globalized Win32, .NET, or web applications. For internationalization issues specific to Microsoft .NET, or Windows CE .NET, see the links below.

A list of articles on globalization and localization in .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET

Information on creating World-Ready applications in Windows CE .NET 4.2

This series of pages show the most common mistakes made and/or the best practices to use when creating World-Ready applications

Find the latest information, and updates on topics covered by this book.

New home for the Microsoft's out of print reference on developing software that can be used world–wide.