Culture and UI Culture for ASP.NET Web Page

The two culture settings do not have to have the same value. Depending on your application, it might be important to set them separately. An example is a Web auction site. TheUICulture property might change for each Web browser, whereas the Culture stays constant. Therefore, prices are always displayed in the same currency and formatting.

The Culture value can be set to specific cultures only, such as en-US or en-GB. This prevents the requirement to identify the correct currency symbol to use for en, where en-USand en-GB have different currency symbols.

Users can set the UI culture and culture in their browsers. For example, in Microsoft Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, users can click Internet Options, on the General tab, click Language, and then set their language preference. If the enableClientBasedCulture attribute of the globalization element in the Web.config file is set to true, ASP.NET can set the UI culture and culture for a Web page automatically, based on the values that are sent by a browser.

It is not a best practice to rely exclusively on browser settings to determine the UI culture for a page. Users frequently use browsers that are not set to their preferences (for example, in an Internet cafe). You should provide a method for users to explicitly choose a language or language and culture (CultureInfo name) for the page.