The date is August 4th 2011 and also the 4th day in Ramadhan 1432 in Hijri calendar. Started with my intention to memorize a few surah in the Holy Quran, I begin  downloading some digital Quran available in android market. It was “iQuran” and “Quran Android”.

Both application is good, but each has its own disadvantage.  The ‘best’ one is not free, and the ‘free’ one is not good enough.
The key feature of the ‘best’ one are :
- inline translations in various language / translator
- good quran script, easily readable, and not an image so it can maintain its size while rotating and provides accurate bookmark
- various reciter with smooth audio tansition between verses
- advanced audio playback (continuous, loop, repeat verses/surah), very usefull for user who wants to memorize specific surah/verses
- search and bookmark feature
- very good user interface and smooth scrolling
- fast audio / translation server to get most of the resources needed
But it costs almost $6 to get all that feature.

On the other hand, the ‘free’ one doesn’t have all the feature, or it has bug that should be worked out, for example :
- separate script and translation
- script provided with an image
- poor audio playback and quality
- poor user interface and other feature
It is free and it is an open source software so we can add other functionality or enhance the existing one. But, in my opinion, it doesn’t have enough foundation to build some advance feature like : searching, accurate bookmark, inline translation – or other usefull thing (tajwid, asbabun nuzul, etc).

So it comes in my mind to bring both advantage together to be the ‘best-free’ digital quran. And hopefully it will benefit everyone.

In my experience, to be ‘free’, it should be an open source software, so that everyone in community may contribute, take advantage, and doing quality assurance. To be the ‘best’, it needs a solid foundation on every aspect of a digital quran including the following :

- business nature
— correct information
— satisfy user needs
— provide advance feature
— smooth user experience

- technology
— adequate data structure to accomodate advance and future feature
— support layers of information based on user needs
— support collaborative work
— portable and scalable
— provide thin client and database server for in-depth resource

In the upcoming posts, we’ll try to show how we build each aspect of a digital quran. We’ll also put knowledge repository in Wikipedia so everyone may contribute in the making of this digital quran. Insya Allah. May Allah help our effort.

Ali Irfan

I know it won’t be easy, but it might be fun, inspiring, awesome and wonderful. Therefore I ’m promising to make use of the community of other bloggers with similiar goals, to help me along the way, including asking for help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.

Signed.
alistiana