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Saturday, April 11, 2009

Anandabazar's website NOT using unicode !! Damn it's sad

নন্দবাজার পত্রিকা [AnandaBazar Patrika] - largest subscribed 1st Class Bengali Daily  ( ভারতে সর্বাধিক প্রচারিত প্রথম শ্রেণীর বাংলা দৈনিক) has its own online presence under www.anandabazar.com
I genrally do not use Internet Explorer except viewing the sites which needs ActiveX support. I always prefer Opera Browser for its awesome customerizing options and good speed !  Though activeX can be opted on Opera via Neptune plug in, I use IE for such sites. Sometimes i also use Firefox with IE-View addon for these sites. At present only activex-supported site in my list is Anandabazar's site. 
Problem with IE 8  :-(
As Microsoft released IE 8, I downloaded it and installed , but Anandabazar site can't be viewed with IE8 , Tab hangs and recovers to a blank tab, even Firefox also hangs to open it with IE View add on !! So I have to rolled back to IE7.
Well, IE 8 is not still a great browser to me. IE8 becomes more sophisticated to manage for me, specially after using Google Chrome. But i am posting it 'coz of the fact Anandabazar still using ActiveX for thier site. It's sick decision to stick to activeX. To view the site , you also need to install Bitstream's Web Font Player automatically , which is detected as virus by a no. of antiviruses , including my Avast! AV. But actully it's not a virus - 'There is no VIRUS in TD Server.' But when ever i try to open this site, i need to shut down my Anti Virus services.
Well they made a solution page -বাংলা না এলে
But this is not a proper solution, probably on Linux you can't open it, as Linux has no IE. Test will be grabbed like this : 

Being the best bengali newspaper as per total no. of reader , I think they should use unicode for their site. Unicode is well supported by most of the browsers. 
Anyway i know my blog is just good-for-nothing , I dont have a good no of readers, still i want the change on Anandabazar's website. Why they are not making the change I don't know. I think they should work on it, it's huge task !
Well I just googled on this topic, and found a good page relevant to my post ! Omnicron Lab , maker of Avro Keyboard (a good program for bengali typing on almost programs ) also telling this fact. Read the topic from OL forum - CLik-iT  .
 'How to open Anandabazar's site on Browsers' 
Basic rule: open this site on Internet explorer keeping your antivirus or firewall stopped. it will then autoinstall Bitstream's Web Font Player on IE. IE 7 will work. IE 8 has issues with it. Reloading the WebFont Player for Internet Explorer (Windows only) 
On Firefox , use IEView or IETab add-on. (Tested !) On Opera, use Neptune plugin [Visit here]
Chrome and Safari will not work! :( and this site works well only on Windows platform, I don't think on Mac or Linux or Unix you could open it easily, may be there are some tricks ! but in a brief on Mac or Linux you will not able to open Anandabazar's site.

BIG UPDATE (dated 24th August, 2010) 

Casually I visited Anandabazar's Wikipedia page where I found a link which is awesome. A proxy of Anandabazar's Unicode version - http://anandabazar-unicode.appspot.com/proxy

I request/recommend you to visit the main page also http://anandabazar-unicode.appspot.com/ and sign the petition for Unicode version of ABP! a lot of thanks for Golam M Hossain.


PROBLEM SOLVED: Anandabazar makes the site unicode dependent - new site http://www.anandabazar.in/ which is Browser/Hardware/Font independent

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Bh said...

I also have faced exactly the same problem.. My IE8 is being crashed by the Anandabazar Website. Also in Firefox the same incident is happening. Though after the first crash of my Firefox amazingly I can read the paper in Google Chrome. But one firefox crash is needed. I don't know why this is happening.. Anyway Anandabazar should seriously think about the matter so that we can read the paper using most web browsers... Bh

Unknown said...

It is surprising but if you open Anandabazar first on IE8 and then open it on Google Chrome then the fonts are correctly displayed on Google Chrome. However as soon as you close the web page in IE8 the bengali fonts disappear and garble in the Google Chrome browser.

Soumen Jana said...

Thnx fr that link. Its realy work on Linux 32-bit OS. Grt