What’s it for?

Much of the Internet is in English, and many American web developers rarely have cause to think beyond languages like French or Spanish when it comes to internationalization. From a development perspective, such languages function more or less like English does, and so the general structure of the webpages tends to assume a layout based on your average book or magazine, with its left to right procession of text down the page. There’s a problem there, however, and it is that other languages with other writing systems exist, and the Internet isn’t just for English speakers. If you absolutely must have an financial reason for making websites work for non-left-to-right scripts, know that Arabic speakers account for no small portion of Internet users; the kind of audience you wouldn’t want to just pass over. However, making websites more flexible is important on principle alone. If knowledge of left-to-right scripts is a requirement for using the Internet, then it can never live up to its popular image as a great equalizer. Read more