The reason I don’t blog in Arabic

Published September 1st, 2006 under Personal
by Mashhoor Al Dubayan

The first question most of my friends ask me the first time they visit my blog is “Why aren’t you blogging in Arabic?”. The answer is: I’d really love to, but i can’t.

When it comes to Web Development, Arabs are still (unfortunately) living in the late 90’s. Web Design to them is basically “front page” or “Dream Weaver”; Usability and Accessibility are two things I’ve never seen discussed in any technical Arab forum; JavaScript is underestimated and abused; Web standards are considered “luxury” instead of “requirement”. Why would I want to target an audience who won’t have even the slightest interest in my posts?

On top of that, most of the technical terms don’t have standard Arabic words to describe them, and a plenty of terms simply can’t be translated without losing some or all of their true meanings. So, even if i wanted to blog in Arabic, it would be very difficult for me (especially when i have to use a right-to-left language with a left-to-write markup).

I hope that I didn’t offend any fellow Arab with my post. I’m not trying to underestimate my people. They do pretty well in many things, but Web Development didn’t happen to be one of them. :)

Top 10 Web Annoyances

Published August 10th, 2006 under Personal, Web Development
by Mashhoor Al Dubayan

In this post, I compiled a list of the 10 most annoying things I experience on the web. There are more annoyances out there, but since these 10 annoyances popped up in my mind first, then they probably are the most annoying things on the web for me.

10. Web Development misconceptions

People Who think that:

  • Whoever “knows” HTML can write decent markup.
  • JavaScript isn’t worth learning since many scripts’ websites are available online.
  • FrontPage is the best choice (or even an option) for designing web sites.
  • PHP is a language for amateur programmers.
  • CSS-based layouts are just a fad.
  • “Graphic Designers” are the ones responsible for “Web Design” since both names share the “design” part, even though Web Design involves coding.

And a few other things I don’t recall right now.

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