DharmeshPatel.com » Web Design

My work on the wall

premii — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:54:57 +0000

Preview new Yahoo! Homepage that I redesign.

Yahoo & IE7 Beta 1

premii — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:44:36 +0000

Looks like Yahoo! Mail uses browser sniffer script.

And they don’t even suggest to install Mozilla Firefox in the error message.

Local Language Website Using Unicode

premii — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 23:04:24 +0000

I am helping to redesign a website readgujarati.com in local Gujarati(Indian) language. Currently they are using images for the content of the site, and I am helping to built a new site using Unicode characters for Gujarati language. Here is some useful information about creating non-English website that I gathered during the process.

Unicode: The official line at http://www.unicode.org says, ‘Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language’.

OS Support

Windows 2000/XP
Arial Unicode MS contains full fonts for Arabic, Indian (Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil,…), Japanese, etc. in addition to all the charaters in Arial font. For list of langauages please refer to Microsoft support site. Using Arial Unicode MS font user can read different langauage documents including websites without installing specific langauage font(s).

Windows 95/98
Unicode fonts are not provided with windows 95/98. Windows 95/98 user must download and Install unicode font in order to view local language website.

Mac:
Mac users (OS X 10.3 and above) are advised to install the optional Languages Support package, found in the OS X installation CD/DVD.

Linux:
Most linux distribution supports unicode. Search Google for more information about unicode support in particular langauage.

Example of Hindi & Gujarati

English:: My name is Dharmesh

Hindi:: à¤®à¥‡à¤°à¤¾ à¤¨à¤¾à¤® à¤§à¤®à¥‡à¥…à¤¶ à¤¹à¥ˆ.
Should look like:

Gujarati:: àª®àª¾àª°à«? àª¨àª¾àª® àª§àª®à«…à«‡àª¶ àª›à«‡.
Should look like:

Language tags:

Search Engine:

Google and Yahoo supports unicode text search, that means you can search in you own language. For an example: Searching for America in Gujarati langauge.

Book:

HTML & XHTML: The Complete Reference

ClearType

premii — Wed, 18 May 2005 20:40:39 +0000

ClearType is a software technology developed by Microsoft that improves the readability of text on existing LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays), such as laptop screens, Pocket PC screens and flat panel monitors. With ClearType font technology, the words on your computer screen look almost as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper.

Researchers at University of Texas investigated the user response to Microsoft’s ClearType font enhacement technology. In 3 different study, they found that ClearType is beneficial to most people who are performing scanning and readings tasks on the computer.

According to Jakob Nielsen, ClearType technology that is included in XP probably increases reading speed by somewhere between 10% and 15% for users with flat screens.

ClearType is turned off by default in new installations of XP.

If you have Windows XP, you can turn ClearType on by:

Right-click on your Desktop and select Properties
Click the Appearance tab
Click the Effects button
Click the checkbox by Use the following method to smooth edges of font screens
Select ClearType from the drop down box
Click OK

Or, download Windows XP PowerToy version of ClearType Tuner from download.microsoft.com website.