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RTLing

So if RTL is "Right to Left" what is RTLing?

Actually I made up this "verb" (I'm sure I'm not alone :)) to describe the process of converting an LTR (left to right) webpage to an RTL webpage. You'll see RTLing in action in all of the multilingual websites(English/Arabic for example) and in this blog as well. Click the العربية link in the top to see the page flipped.

Okay now how do I RTL?

When you want to write an Arabic document (an RTL document), the first the you do when you open a word processing application (MS Word, Notepad etc) is flipping the direction and get going. Well in the Front End Web Development world it's pretty much the same thing. It's all about flipping. It's about replacing the 'left' with a 'right' in your webpage.

If it's that simple, why this blog?

For many reasons:

  • Not everyone knows how to flip the "Web Page"
  • Not everyone has the time to flip it
  • The flipping isn't simple sometimes, you have many Web Browsers and many Versions of these Web Browsers that you must test your flipped page to
  • Some of the "left" values in the webpage "code" don't have a "right" equivalent
  • ..and many others that can't be covered here and now

To Sum up...

Now that you know what RTLing is...everything else you'll be reading on this blog will be about "RTLing" the web. What would like to see 'RTLed' the most? templates? widgets? anything else? Choose an option from the Voting Poll on the right or share your comments here.