Question

In my case, the question is concretely on JSF, but it can be applied to any technology using web interfaces.

I am mantaining a web interface (xhtml, using JSF), which is all static text (harcoded).

Instead of using hard-coded text, the other option is using something like <h:outputText value=" #{msg['hello.world']} > and put hello.world in a properties file. This allows you to go i18n very easily.

Intuitively, this option is better, but in case you never ever plan to i18n, is it better than just coding? I did not find any clear answer to that question.

Answer 1

You can centralize messages, so in case you need to change a label you don’t need to search whole project and replace it every where, You could simply replace it in message bundle

It also enables i18n

You can have parametrized messages