I18Nized domain names n IE7

I usually post this kind of information in the inloop section but this is a big one. IE7 Beta 2 came with Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) support. IE7 Beta 3 just gets it better.

Remember when we talked about i18n and true localization and discussed the findability problem caused by non-localized domain names ? Recall that? Well, it’s on the way. IE7 now even supports mixing scripts, allowing to have ASCII and other characters in the domain name. Does that include the whole URL? I’ll leave that question at IE Blog.

Update: IEBlog answered: @dotone: The IDN standard only applies to domain names. For the rest of the URL, IE by default uses UTF-8 for the path, and either UTF-8 or codepaged text for the query string.

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Poor standards and e-commerce

We discussed Web Standards and how they’re being more and more embraced in the UAE market yesterday. Today, I came accross an interesting article in IT Weekly Middle East magazine, the article titled “Security fears hold back Arabic surfers” in which eHosting’s Ahmad Baig claims:

The basic level of diligence is lacking

IT Weekly Middle East:

Poor Security, lack of original content and bad design on Arab websites are seriously hindering the development of e-commerce in the Middle East, according to a group of organizations, which have joined forces to develop quality standards for the region’s internet industry.

Dubai Internet City (DIC) and eHosting Datafort have formed Interstandards, the Arab Internet Standard Organization (AISO), as a joint initiative to develop a certification programme for Arab commercial websites in association with the British Standards Institute (BSI).

The companies are still working with the BSI on developing the certification standards, which will cover design, content, marketing, applications, and security. They hope to have certified 50 companies next year and say a number of companies have already registered for certification, including aljazeera.net, maktoob.com, tejari.com, and albawaba.com.

The situation

While I see the need for such programmes and initiatives, given that this article is written for a Business audience more than technical IT/Web people I find the argument very general/broad.

The Middle East region has always suffered from failure in delivering successful e-commerce services. To name one of the oldest e-shops in Dubai: Jacky’s e-commerce shop which is still not even known by most of the people.

While Ahmad Baig claimed that “Arabic” surfers suffer from low quality content and online services because of “Security Fears” I get back to the very fundementals of the e-commerce services– the business model.

My take

The reason behind the fall is not the security fears at all. Users might use their credit cards on eBay or Amazon but why not on sites made in the region? Well, the answer is not security. The data discussed in the article shows the observations of the eHosting and associates. Web surfers are not scared nor they know that the sites are insecure. The problem relies in credibility and integrity of the sites.

Not forgetting that Amazon, eBay and likes have been there in the market for long years now and have pioneered and paid for their own mistakes; it’s shallow to say security is the main issue.

e-commerce websites have been victims of the technologists behind who drive the business e-image. Bad designs, horrible brandings, very technical words and messages make it hard for users! Not forgetting that content should come free for website owners (that’s the beleive of the business owners).

It’s the copy-cat-ness nature of the services that make them fall. You ask why? Well, why should I go with a new startup who I don’t even know who they are in the first place while I could get the same from an International service provider?

It’s the culture, selling to your fellow Middle Easterns is not the same as selling to others. Not even one of the e-commerce portals have invested in User Behavior studies in the Middle East as far as I know, not to make it hard, but please, could you name one Usibility expert who is known in the Middle East?

Where are the business models? Is it (yet another eBay?)

Standards?

By standards I still don’t know what that is supposed to mean in the article. Is it some rules and regulations that are supposed to be made to govern the e-commerce services or just to bullet-proof and lebel the sites under a foreign body so that they raise credibility? Is it gaining credibility by a British tag or seriously bringing standards? I’m confused over here. If eHosting itself does not respect the web-standards on their own website, should they even think of setting standards? It’s puzzling me.

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Web Standards in UAE

That’s true, Web Standards. And they look good on UAE websites. The day Etisalat wears all standards and respects it, is a milestone. It’s a mark, it’s a good thing! ’cause Etisalat usualy never respected web standards, nor browsers.

It was yesterday when I was trying to find out why Etisalat would block YouTube. I hated Etisalat, paying a visit to their website changed my mind (although still hate them for YouTube). Reminded me of DU, the first visit to DU’s freshly simple website.

Finally Table-less

It is satisftying to see at least Table-less XHTML markup in Etisalat’s website. The code might not be valid(not valid at all), the markup is spread badly around white-spaces in code, lauzy Java CMS. But still, Table-less which gives me hope and keeps me happy for a while. There’s progress.

On the other hand, the website structure has improved dramatically! Indeed, great job on the IA. As for accessibility, it might be still underwork, or really just an after thought. Off topic, but really bad typography in English(works for the logo, not for the Nav!)

Pioneers taking standards way

• DU
• Dubai Islamic Bank
• Dubai Internet City
• AMEInfo

This is just the begining, did I forget to mention the huge steps in i18n and localization in the websites designed and developed for/by UAE organizations? Looks good.

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YouTube blocked by Etisalat

Well, not something new, but something very unpleasant. You log on to a site you enjoy watching cool videos and share them with friends and boom, it’s blocked by your ISP, Etisalat. Yea baby, YouTube is blocked!

Once again the cool site has been blocked label on one of your favorite social sites. First Flickr, and now YouTube. I was about to send a link of a funny comedy stand up by Peter Russle to my fellow blogging friend on the IM, a second after that we’re both cursing and my friend already decided to leave the country. I’m just shut up, I honestly am giving up on the communal values of the Internet once again.

Once again, I understand that some of the YouTube content might be against the religious, cultural, and traditional values and might even be offensive. They do URL filtering, contextual filtering so, isn’t that enough?

This is insane. So unfair. What’s next? Google video? We already are blocked from accessing MySpace if you had no idea, it’s like cutting you off from all the Internet society values and services. We could always get around the blockage, but that’s just an unpleasant thing to do.

I’ll write them up and see how that REACH tagline is really applied. Just because we have only one ISP that means we’re locked up so do we really reach?

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Episode #3: Interview with Flip Media, Chameleon CMS

Flip Media’s CMS has been under attack for a while, many blogs and forums talked about it. Listen to the cast, and find out the real story behind what happened and how it was solved.

Along with the WP/Chameleon discussion we talked a little about the Web market of the middle east. So, tune in, listen to the CEO Martin Diessner and the creative director of Flip Media Dinesh Lalvani.

Running time: 00: 21: 57
File size: 20.00 MB
Download: Episode #3, Flip Media’s Chameleon

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Very advanced tools, again

ITP.net, once again presents its “very advanced tools”. I’ve written about this sometime ago, I e-mailed them. Nothing, no action, not even a promise. Such a huge publishing house in UAE still calls print, email, and feedback forms “Advanced Tools”. So, if you actually were reading an article on their portal and clicked on print you should consider yourself one of the smartest people in the middle east? Is that what ITP.net wants to portray?

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Episode #2: i18n and Localization, News buzz.

Here comes the second episode of your dotShow. It’s a short one, I hope 15 minutes wouldn’t be long, but long enough I hope.

I18N, and a short News buzz.

Here you go:
Running time: 00:15:17
File size: 13.9 MB
Download: Episode #2, i18n

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Arabic and Farsi OL tags

UL tags are well used in standard-based website designs. UL tags are used for lists that could be navigation menues or any kind of lists that are of no order. OL’s are supported in different formats. Roman, Latin, and Greek numbers and alphabets. Arabic or Farsi built-in support? Let’s explore that.

As seen on W3

OL and UL tags go under the lists and generated content. The CSS property that controls lists and auto-generated(populated) content is defind under list-style-type. That’s something simple that you’ve seen and dealt with before. Come the difference. ULs are naturally and semantically to use either an image bullet or a glyphs kind of format such as disc, square and circle.

Now our friend OL. In CSS2.1 specs and definitions, OLs could be controlled by the list-style-type with the following numbering system values:

• decimal (beginning with 1)
• decimal-leading-zero (01, 02, 03, …, 98, 99)
• lower-roman (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.)
• upper-roman (I, II, III, IV, V, etc.)
• georgian (an, ban, gan, …, he, tan, in, in-an, …)
• armenian (traditional Armenian numbering)

And alphabetic system values:

• lower-latin or lower-alpha (a, b, c, … z)
• upper-latin or upper-alpha (A, B, C, … Z)
• lower-greek (?, ?, ?, …)

No Arabic or Farsi yet. Right? Disapointing. Let’s take a look at CSS3 definitions.

CSS3 definitions(not final yet), have more than Glyphs/Numeric/Alphabetic systems such as Algorithmic, Symbolic, and Non-Repeating. However the Numeric and Alphabetic systems are richer than CSS2.1 definitions.

Even thought not many browsers implemented the new CSS3 defs completly, some of the new Alphabetic and Numeric systems are applied in Firefox and Opera as of my testings.

One significant system that is applied is Hebrew wich is right-to-left(rtl) system like Arabic and Farsi. So what’s with Arabic and Farsi? Not supported yet. Let’s solve that problem until it is fully supported.

Note: You could view Arabic/Farsi numeric/alphabetic lists if you have your regional settings set as such which is not a setting in CSS nor controlled by your browser–OS controlled!

Let’s get visual

Let’s play with a simple ordered list like:

Numeric formats:

Alphabetic Formats

Arabic Formats

How do we achieve the Arabic format?

We could get the Arabic format by forcing it on the document with a little Javascript. I wrote a little class to do that job and give you back Arabic OLs.

The class is called dot1_ol which you can download here.

What dot1_ol does

dot1_ol is a simple Javascript class that takes an OL element of choice by Id or Class or all the OLs in the document and:

1. Change their list-style-type to none
2. Get all the LI elements in the OL and attach proper numbering to them
3. Finally replace the old OL

Let’s do that

All you have to do is first download the dot1_ol class file and embed it in your head section of your document.

By default dot1_ol reformats all your OL tags to numeric Arabic lists. You could use it to show you Alphabetic by changing the parameter.

Demo

There are four demo files that you could view and play with and even download listed below:

1. Convert all OLs to Numeric Arabic OLs:
2. Convert all OLs to Alphabetic Arabic (Alpha order) OLs
3. Convert all OLs to Alphabetic Arabic (Abjad order) OLs
4. Convert OLs by Id or Class to Arabic formated OLs

Need to play with these simple lists? Download the demo

This is the first attempt to do this, so the code might need a little over looking and tweaking more if needed such as nested lists and complex lists. Review it, check it out and let me know if it was of any use to you.

So, next time you have an Arabic website to design, use OLs, I got your back

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UAE iGroup, speaks English

Finally Emirates Internet Group gets to speak English online. The release of their English site brings some more value to the group and diversifies the group by being accessible to non-Arabic-speaking pros and public. While I like the idea, I still don’t know what are the so-called Shareholders in the splash page.

The group had their first open meeting where a presentation on Web2.0 took place and a meeting with another group’s leader. I was so close to be there this time, so close. Next time I’ll be ready way before that. I really need to see how it goes and if possible, participate and network with the members. Sounds cool.

I still haven’t heard from anyone who attended the meetings or participated. I could only read the group’s forums on the subject, still no outsider who’s been there. Any stats?

I see a number of bloggers in Emirates that have interesting posts and insights. Guys, why not meet in the next meeting of the Internet Group? Anyone ready? Let’s do that.

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iToot interview & bloging Misc

Seems like I never posted this. Last week, well two weeks ago I recorded the first episode of dotShow and featured an interview with the team behind iToot.net. If you haven’t heard the show, then check it out here.

What I noticed on Toot is the lack of commercial blogs. That made me search for some. I was shocked by the low level of adoption of commercial bloging in the Middle Eeast.

So I’m thinking, is it the adoption nature that it’s all about time, or just the nature of closed-ended business in the Middle East. Lately the only ad/online agency that I read their blog was under a childish attack in forums and blogs. The agency used WordPress as their CMS and sold it to clients as the tool for managing content without mentioning the whole story behind the CMS. Anyway, thank god they had a blog and that could open up doors and ways for communicating the issue and solving it up. It works!

Okay, I think I’m taken in dwwen. So searched for commercial blogs there too, to no avail.

Or maybe it’s not the right time to talk about commercial blogs in the Middle East?

How much I wished Etisalat had a blog. At least when they blocked Flickr we could ask and get a PR from a proper representative.

Etisalat, please, get us a blog, get us a human being that posts and answers. We have loads of questions and feedback! Didn’t you just say REACH?

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