Pluginweb.Net

Over on the Google Open Source blog I got to post about a new tool by Lindsey Simon that takes your CSS and spits out versions ready for the RTL world (or vice versa if you are a developer elsewhere that wants an English version….. which may be more common?).

CSSJanus is CSS parser utility designed to aid the conversion of a website’s layout from left-to-right (LTR) to right-to-left (RTL). The script was born out of a need to convert CSS for RTL languages when tables are not being used for layout (since tables will automatically reorder TD’s in RTL). CSSJanus will change most of the obvious CSS property names and their values as well as some not-so-obvious ones (cursor, background-position %, etc…). The script is designed to offer flexibility to account for cases when you do not want to change certain rules which exist to account for bidirectional text display bugs, as well as situations where you may or may not want to flip annotations inside of the background url string. CSSJanus itself is not always enough to make a website that works in a LTR language context work in a RTL language all the way, but it is a start.

Here is Lindsey talking about it, and showing how it works.