Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Three new languages and a whole new direction for Blogger

We are excited to announce that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian! Blogger in Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian Supporting these languages is a huge milestone for us because — unlike the other 37 languages Blogger is translated into — Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew are written from right to left. As you can see from the above screenshot, we had to flip the whole interface around. Besides localizing the Blogger interface into these three languages, we have right-to-left templates and have added new toolbar buttons for bi-directional text editing in the post editor. The effort was worth it, however, and we’re tremendously happy to be a part of the growing Arabic-, Hebrew-, and Persian-language blogging communities. Changing your language preferences and settings To see the Blogger interface in one of these languages, just use the menu on your Dashboard. You can also choose your language on Blogger’s homepage and via the “Language” link in the footer of most pages. From then on, all new blogs you create will default to using your new language choice. If you need to change the language of an existing blog, just go to Settings > Formatting and select a new language there. Your blog language affects date formatting and other blog text, and, with today’s release of Blogger, your blog’s comments form as well. Right-to-left templates For Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew blogs, we will also rearrange your template to read more logically from right to left. So, a blog that once looked like this: will now look like this: Please note that your template won’t change if you’ve customized it with Edit HTML; we wouldn’t dare muck with your data! Also, if you’re still using a Classic template you will have to upgrade to Layouts in order to take advantage of bidirectional language templates. Learn how. Bidirectional text editing We’ve also added right-to-left and left-to-right buttons to Blogger’s post editor. They’ll appear if your Dashboard language or your blog’s language setting is for a right-to-left language. Clicking on these buttons will set the paragraph you are currently editing to either right-to-left or left-to-right mode. This way you can write truly bidirectional posts.

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