Things I dont like about FireFox.
I recently started using Firefox mainly because I was using Solaris with Java Desktop Systems. Though Firefox is doing good but it falls short in many places.
I use browsers to read newspapers, books published, online. Firefox has definitely failed to catch attention of people like me who love to read articles published in their language.
Coming to the point, I use Firefox 1.7 on solaris and Firefox 1.5.3 on windows XP. In neither of these there is no default support to Kannada(a Indic) language support.
I installed 1.5.3 on windows, checked what are languages it supports,
<b>I was shocked to see, Kannada is not in the list of languages.</b>
Tools->Options->Advanced Tab->Edit Languages.
At the same time, other Indic languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil are listed.
The second point is Font support to Kannada.
Tools->Options->Content->Click Advanced tab in Fonts and Colors list. Again on the Fonts for list, Kannada is not listed.
Knowing the steps now to get kannada characters on the browser I could see my favourite language using Firefox on Windows but on Solaris it is still pathetic, Even though you have correct fonts installed, It does not render kannada characters properly.
The behaviour of firefox on solaris with Java Desktop Systems is similar to the bad kannada text rendered on windows with text:align=justify property.(Bug 240914).
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240914
Kannada, having a history of over 2500 years, rich set of documents, books, articles, If Firefox people do not catch the attention of Kannada, they will certainly loose out.
There are plans to digitise all the great works of kannada scholars on the web. Read this article.
http://www.hindu.com/2005/11/20/stories/2005112018710300.htm
<b>If Firefox does not support kannada, I dont see any reason why I should support it.</b>
thanks,
Sunil.
