February 2022 Summaries

Courier Elemental is an omni-channel markup language for notifications that provides a powerful JSON-based syntax to describe the content of your notification for email, push, chat, or any channel you use to notify users. It enables developers to create dynamic, engaging notification experiences that feel like a natural extension of the core product experience. Courier Elemental simplifies the tedious parts of notification development and allows for more customization based on locale, channel, and advanced custom logic. The language supports various elements such as buttons, images, text, and links, and can be used to create notifications with conditional content, magic login links, multi-language support, and location-based alerts.

Internationalization is crucial for modern companies as it allows them to cater to a global audience by supporting multiple languages and regions. Effective internationalization involves abstracting culture- and locale-specific elements from the software, while localization is the process of creating these specific elements for every different locale. A managed service can help handle the translation process, communication pathways, user profiles, and data logging, allowing developers to focus on providing translations at their own pace. There are various tools available for implementing internationalization, including open-source libraries and frameworks such as i18next, FormatJS, GlobalizeJS, Ruby on Rails, and Polyglot.js. When building an i18n notification workflow, it's essential to consider the time and resources required, weighing the benefits of expediency and user engagement against the potential complexity and cost of implementing internationalization logic from scratch.