How can I get started developing a site in Arabic in ASP.NET?

Question

I would like to develop a website using ASP.NET in an Arabic language.

What would be some good places to begin?

Useful advice to keep in mind?

Answer 1

I did some of this in a former life, here's what I recall:

Is it going to be just ar-foo? If not (and I would always encourage thinking about the future possibilities), then having a page layout which is either flexible enough to handle RTL and LTR or switchable is going to be a big deal. That includes moving elements like the ubiquitous left-hand menu.

Make sure your character encoding supports arabic and is completely standardised from the DB up. XML/XSLT docs are notorious for being forgotten about here.

It's unlikely but possible that calendars will be a problem. You'll probably get away with using a western calendar in a business application, but the hijri calendar not only varies by country, but in an unpredictable pattern by astronomical event.

Finally, be very very careful with your graphics content. Again, this is unlikely to be a problem, but it's a big one if it does come up. I believe my company at the time actually ran stuff past a cleric at the local mosques community centre.