How to add display language menu to page

Question

I have a question concerning the display language menu. Standard that menu is when you click my name in the top corner and there if the language pack is installed you have languages to chose from.

So the actual question is, can i have same kind of language choice menu in a different spot? For example in one or another webpart or just somewhere on the page, in the header or footer? If it is possible how to do it then?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The language toggle is actually just a javascript function that sets a cookie and reloads the page. You can put it anywhere.

It was very cleverly named: OnSelectionChange(lcid)

To have for example a French/English toggle, put the following div in your page:

<div class="language-switch">
    <a id="language-fr" href="javascript:OnSelectionChange(1036);">Fr</a>
    |<a id="language-en" href="javascript:OnSelectionChange(1033);">En</a> 
</div>

For auto styling of the selected lang, add the following snippet:

function readCookie(name) {
    var nameEQ = name + "=";
    var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
    for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) {
            var c = ca[i];
            while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
            if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return     c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length);
        }
        return null;
    }

$(document).ready(function() {
        var lcid = readCookie("lcid");
        if(lcid) {
            if(lcid == 1033) {
                $("#language-en").addClass("current-language");
                $("#language-fr").removeClass("current-language");
            } else {
                $("#language-fr").addClass("current-language");
                $("#language-en").removeClass("current-language");
            }
        }
});

And put a style on the current-language class (for example, bold font).

Voilà!

Answer 2

If I don't wrong the delegate control that has the ability to change the current regional settings and language is the RegionalSettingsExtensionsDelegate delegate control.

You can find a use of it in the page regionalsetng.aspx in the directory C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS