Share via

Develop globalized and localized apps

  • Article

Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Visual Studio makes developing for an international audience easy by taking advantage of services built into .NET.

For example, the project system for Windows Forms apps can generate resource files for both the fallback UI culture and each additional UI culture. When you build a project in Visual Studio, the resource files are compiled from the Visual Studio XML format (.resx) to an intermediate binary format (.resources), which are then embedded in satellite assemblies. For more information, see Resource files in Visual Studio and Create satellite assemblies for desktop apps.

Bidirectional languages

You can use Visual Studio to create applications that correctly display text in languages written right-to-left, including Arabic and Hebrew. For some features, you can simply set properties. In other cases, you must implement features in code.

Note

In order to enter and display bidirectional languages, you must be working with a version of Windows that is configured with the appropriate language. This can either be an English version of Windows with the appropriate language pack installed, or the appropriately localized version of Windows.

Apps that support bidirectional languages

  • Windows apps

    You can create fully bidirectional applications that include support for bidirectional text, right-to-left reading order, and mirroring (reversing the layout of windows, menus, dialog boxes, and so on). Except for mirroring, these features are available by default or as property settings. Mirroring is supported inherently for some features, such as message boxes. However, in other cases you must implement mirroring in code. For more information, see bidirectional support for Windows Forms applications.

  • Web apps

    Web services support sending and receiving UTF-8 and Unicode text, making them suitable for applications that involve bidirectional languages. Web client applications rely on browsers for their user interface, so the degree of bidirectional support in a web application is dependent on how well the user's browser supports those bidirectional features. In Visual Studio, you can create applications with support for Arabic or Hebrew text, right-to-left reading order, file encoding, and local culture settings. For more information, see Bidirectional support for ASP.NET web applications.

Note

Console apps do not include text support for bidirectional languages. This is a consequence of how Windows works with console applications.

See also