Instructions for Arabic Language Exercises

These exercises are designed for modern Web browsers. In order for them to work correctly, you will need an appropriate operating system and browser combination. The browser and OS must support Unicode (an advanced standardized system for representing all human languages), and current WWW standards (XHTML 1.1 and JavaScript).

These are the basic requirements:

• Microsoft Windows NT4, 2000, XP, Vista or Windows 7, Mac OSX 10.2+, or a recent version of Linux.
• Internet Explorer version 6 or above, Firefox, Opera or Safari (other browsers may work too).
• At least one of the following Unicode fonts which cover the Arabic range: Simplified Arabic, Traditional Arabic, Arial Unicode MS, or Arial Unicode MS. These are in order of preference (in other words, the Arabic text will probably look best with Simplified Arabic, and worst with Arial Unicode MS).

Older versions of the Macintosh operating system do not provide effective support for Unicode, and neither do older Windows versions such as Windows95, 98 or ME. There are occasional glitches in Unicode support in OSX 10.2, so we recommend that you use a more recent version if possible.

To check whether your system works correctly, look at the two items below. One is a picture of what you SHOULD see; the other is some actual text. The text should be similar to the picture; it may not be identical in appearance or style (a different font may be used, and the size may be different), but all the Arabic characters should be the same:

Picture	Text
	بُت

Some exercises will require that you type Arabic characters into a textbox to provide answers. On these pages, special buttons will appear for each character; pressing a button will "type" that character into the textbox (at the end of the current text). However, if you wish to become proficient at reading and writing Arabic, we recommend that you install an Arabic keyboard in your operating system, and learn to type for yourself.

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