First release of Persian Mozilla Firefox ever!

Download Persian Mozilla Firefox 3.5 now! This is the first time Firefox is released in Persian. The number of supported languages has raised to 70 this time!

I started the Mozilla Persian localization team back in 2002 and after almost 7 years, this is our first release, which is very very close to perfect! I should thank Ehsan Akhgari for his great help to the Persian team and the Mozilla project generally in the past couple of years.

Mozilla/Firefox Hacks for Power Users (Hack 200C+0002)

Here is some preferences I have set, and you may like to set them, if you are a power user, bidi user, or your locale is not en-US, but have to use this locale.

Newbie HOWTO: use "about:config" to set this key/values.

Power User:

• layout.word_select.stop_at_punctuation
• layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word

Set them to TRUE if you want Ctrl+Left/Right-Arrows stop at the start/end of alpha-numeric words (like what you get on Gtk+/Gnome). Default values make it to jump to the next/previous Space/Tab character! The second one also affects word boundary on selecting with mouse double-click.

• browser.triple_click_selects_paragraph

(Mozilla >= 1.9, Firefox >= 3.0a1)
This option allows you to select whether triple click should select the whole paragraph, or just the line you are clicking. If it's FALSE, you can select the whole paragraph with quadruple-click (Wait, it doesn't work on Gtk+/Gnome, as Gtk+ doesn't support quadruple-click. If you like it, here are the Mozilla bug: #348751.)

• network.http.max-persistent-connctions-per-proxy
• network.http.max-persistent-connctions-per-server

If you use Tor, or any other proxy in your LAN, just set the first one to a big number (I use 50). Also I set the second one to 8, as Flickr and many other photo-sharing sites use just one domain for almost all images on the their pages, so I cannot get even two pages simultaneously. (maps.google.com is smart enough)

• network.protocol-handler.external.ed2k
• network.protocol-handler.app.ed2k

Here are how you can define a protocol and set the external application. In this example, I set ED2K protocol. Create the first key as Boolean, and set the value to TRUE. Then create the second key as String, and set the path to your ed2k link-handler ("/usr/bin/ed2k" for me) as its value. That's it.
Homework: Create a protocol-handler and write a script to handle Yahoo! Messenger links, and make GAIM do the requested action (add buddy, send message, etc). Of course you should mail them to me to get your point. :D)

• mousewheel.horizscroll.*.action

Try possible values for this key (0..4 IIRC) to get more functions under your fingers (horizontal scroll of your professional mouse, or the touch-pad of your laptop).

Localization:

• printer.printer_PostScript/*.print_paper_name

If you live in a country (or organization) which the default paper size is A4, not Letter, just set the value of this key to "A4".

• browser.fixup.alternate.suffix

And if your want to set the default ".com" value to something else (i.e. ".co.uk" or ".ir"), just set it in this key.

Bi-Directional:

• bidi.browser.ui

And this is the best part for Arabic, Iranian (Persian), and Israeli (Hebrew) users. Setting this key to TRUE will do some magic for you. You can switch the text direction and alignment of input fields with just one keystroke: Ctrk+Shift+X! Also you can switch the page direction from the View menu. Help yourself!

• mousewheel.horizscroll.*.numlines

If you use Mozilla/Firefox in a right-to-left locale, just set the value of these keys to "1" instead of default "-1". Here are the Mozilla bug: #350594.

Ok, that's all. Let me know if you have problem with this hacks, or other L10n (localization), Bidi (bi-directional), or RTL (right-to-left) problems with Mozilla/Firefox.

What Microsoft did to the Persian Language

Recently I installed Microsoft's Persian UI for Windows XP. Seems like Microsoft can't do anything right for Persian. They use SPACE instead of ZWNJ everywhere in the UI. WTF?! After spending about 1.5 million USD on Persian (they even call it Farsi) support on Windows, the real Persian Windows is still a dream. They are practically removing ZWNJ from Persian, just because they don't know how to use it (or rather, their American-grown confused Iranians don't.)

Microsoft is the one who brought U+064A ARABIC LETTER YEH (Yeh with two dots bellow in final and isolate forms) to Persian, instead of U+06CC ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH (Yeh without any dots in final and isolate forms), with their buggy fonts. Even Windows Persian keyboard layout have never been compatible with the Iranian standard layout. Now it's so common to see Arabic Yeh and Keh instead of Persian ones everywhere, everytime. More info.

This story reminds me of an old joke:
A British guy was arguing with a Hindi guy.
The British guy says:
We f**ked your country for one hundred years!
The Hindi guy responds:
We f**ked your language forever!