14 DAY TRIAL // Some people tend to be a little narrow-minded not to say obtuse when trying to explain to others that their religious belief is the "real" one. Even I had mistakenly argued with people over that matter. At the very start, I must declare I'm a Christian, the orthodox one and I'm not telling anyone to follow my way. Not that you were interested about it. Politically correct we should be, yes, but not by oppressing our basic freedoms. I just believe that God is One and as Satan has many names, so does God. Whoever they might be and whatever you want to call them.
And as we learn from our mistakes, I found out that respect for one's ideas comes by paying tribute to some things we learn by ourselves when confronting the same situations. I've come to realize that one's self esteem and pride are two things you can easily play with or you can't play at all. Therefore, I've jumped to a simple conclusion: I should never again try to change one's mind, I should first look inside myself.
We all have a faith, a religious belief. Some don't. Or they keep telling that they trust themselves. Whatever that might be it's not the point of this material to reveal it. Here, I'm only trying to express my opinions about a religion, one of the most numerous in followers. We're talking about Islam and we're talking about its sacred book The Holy Qu'ran. I'll just present these by showing you the features of a right to the point software, an electronic version of Islam's holy book.
One more thing... we must not die by the sword just to enrich some filthy bastards that are only seeking power and dominion. That's a phantasm, I know. And maybe this is just nature's way of keeping equilibrium as wars have always existed. Who's afraid of dying anyway? But I can't write something about Muslims' beliefs and not thinking of 9/11 attacks. The world has changed since September 2001. We all know and see it. Who drew the first blood? It doesn't matter anymore, but it's sad that people are further dying.
So, the reviewed software's name is The Koran (Holy Qur'an) and comes from Zagreb, Croatia. Muslims believe that the original Arabic text of the Qu'ran is actually the word of God, as revealed to the prophet, Muhammad. Qu'ran is Islam's most important religious text. Literally taken, Qu'ran means "the recitation".
The Koran comes in a book-like simple interface and allows you to read, in English and Arabic, the Islam's Book. When starting the program, it says that it works better under an 800x600 pixel resolution. If you press "yes," it will automatically change your screen resolution. So press no, I'd say.
It's not the newest Windows Vista eye candy interface but at least the font is bolded and the text can be easily read.
The main interface of The Koran (Holy Qur'an) is book-like. Be careful that counting starts from right to left, so turning the page is in reverse order. The right page is the English version while in the left side is the Arabic text of the Book. Just keep browsing through it to read what you're interested in.
In the upper side of the main window are the tool bar and menu. Actually, the tool bar displays some useful shortcuts of options you can reach in the menu above the bar. From the classics open/save and print to fullscreen view and jump to chapter/page buttons. Jump to chapter will let you choose from the 114 Chapters (Surahs) of the Qur'an.
Of course there are functions which are not listed in the menu. Like creating new animated pages and a button that enables a special cursor for text underlining. The file menu also lets you load your translations of the Qu'ran from the producer's website.
Now the menu bar
The Koran (Holy Qur'an)'s menu is structured in eight parts. The File menu has all the management options: you can open/save your previously underlined text; the options are also available here. It features a little animation chooser (fast, default, and precious) and some other functions (sound, message displaying and saving). Print and exit are also to be found in the File menu.
The edit menu is simple as cake. It is implemented with 6 ways of copying text from the software. You can make copies of the right/left or both pages, copy the chapter or the underlined text or the entire Book. As much as I've tried to copy a chapter, my 1 GB of RAM wouldn't be enough: it kept telling me "not available memory". I couldn't copy any page either, a small error box appeared every time.
The third menu, the view one, will put on/off the tool and sound bars. You can also view all the Allah's names here.
Qu'ran is the name of the next menu. A very useful one, as it lets you jump through any desired page, chapter or underlined text of the book. Its last option will put you to a simple HTML page creator that makes a webpage with the Qu'ran. The text can be formatted before creating the HTML version and a background image of your choice can be inserted.
I would have enjoyed most the sound menu. You'll have to download all other chapter sounds because only the first one is available. Unfortunately, all the audio links provided by the producer are dead. I hope it's just a temporary thing.
In the Tools menu, you can format the font, search the Qu'ran and organize your prayers. The calendar view can be switched from Hirji to Gregorian and every praying can be associated with an animation, both male and female images.
The Window menu will launch the software in full screen mode. The last menu is the Help one, with the program's hints and the producer's about.
The Good
I liked a lot the HTML creator. You can add your own image as a background of the resulted page. A more general thing: I like Arabic music and I would have loved to hear other sounds here too. I used to visit a Muslim friend of mine and just listen to their music and prayers. I'm a big music listener and I'm very fond of oriental sounds. One thing my stomach couldn't like at all was their spices. Truly HOT!
The Bad
One annoying thing: if the program's window is active, you can minimize it only by pressing the minimize cell at the right upper corner of the window. It's not going down if you click the window beneath it. Weird thing is that it doesn't happen all the time. Also, working with the sound bar freezed the software. So did if Print Setup was activated (it shouldn't matter whether I have an installed printer or not, no?).
The Truth
If you are a Muslim and want the holy Book to be at hand, give a try to this simple software. If you are not a Muslim, try at least to see what's really behind this book upon which a religion was made.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
