In today’s interconnected world, it’s important that online applications support different cultures.

Even if most of us that spend a lot of time online are accustomed to the USA date and number formats, people always prefer to see numbers and dates formatted in a familiar way. People don’t like to think about if the date’s first digit is day or month, or if it’s decimal delimiter or digit grouping mark.

The date 03/02/2010 means completely different thing in Australia and USA – it’s February the 3rd in the former and March the 2nd in latter! (dd/mm/yyyy vs mm/dd/yyyy)

Even if we assume that the common internet user can read the shown format based on the website’s supposed location, localization and internationalization (i18n) could greatly improve readability and usability.