Building an RTL Hebrew Video Platform with Nuxt 2 SSR and Video.js

The Problem

Hebrew is a right-to-left language. Building a video platform where Hebrew is the primary language — not an afterthought — means RTL has to be the default at every layer: layout, navigation, text direction, input alignment, and icon mirroring. On top of that, the site needed server-side rendering for SEO (video titles, channel names, and category pages all need to be crawlable), and a player that remembers exactly where a user left off across sessions and devices.

What We Built

kolel.org is a Nuxt 2 universal app — SSR on first load, client-side navigation thereafter. Vuetify 2 handles the UI with RTL enabled globally. @nuxtjs/i18n manages locale detection with Hebrew (he) as the default and English (en) as a fallback. Video playback uses Video.js 7 with a custom Vue wrapper that tracks position and syncs it to the Rails API on a 5-second interval.

How It Works

Key Technical Decisions

1. Vuetify RTL enabled globally

Setting rtl: true in vuetify.options.js flips all Vuetify components — navigation drawers open from the right, icons mirror, flex directions invert, and text aligns right by default. One flag, entire UI:

// vuetify.options.js
export default {
  defaultAssets: {
    font: false,
    icons: 'mdi'
  },
  theme: {
    themes: {
      light: { primary: '#1e88e5' },
      dark:  { primary: '#1e88e5' }
    }
  },
  rtl: true  // flips the entire Vuetify UI to right-to-left
}

2. Hebrew as the default locale, no URL prefix

@nuxtjs/i18n is configured with strategy: 'no_prefix' so Hebrew URLs are clean (e.g. /video/123 not /he/video/123). Browser language detection is disabled — every visitor gets Hebrew first, with English available via a manual toggle:

// config/i18n.js
const messages = {
  en: { ...require('../locales/en.json'), $vuetify: en, dir: 'ltr' },
  he: { ...require('../locales/he.json'), $vuetify: he, dir: 'rtl' },
}

export default {
  locale: 'he',
  fallbackLocale: 'en',
  messages
}

// nuxt.config.js
i18n: {
  locales: ['en', 'he'],
  defaultLocale: 'he',
  localeDetection: false,
  detectBrowserLanguage: false,
  strategy: 'no_prefix',
  vueI18n: i18n
}

3. Video.js player with watch-position tracking

The player is a Vue component that mounts Video.js imperatively in mounted(). A setInterval running every 5 seconds calls storeVideoPosition(), which sends the current playback time to the Rails API — so a user who closes the tab resumes from the exact second on any device:

import videojs from 'video.js';

// mounted()
this.player = videojs(this.$refs.videoPlayer, this.playerOptions);

this.player.ready(() => {
  this.playVideo(this.videoUrl);
});

this.player.on('ratechange', this.playerRateChanged);
this.player.on('play',  this.playing);
this.player.on('pause', this.stopInterval);
this.player.on('ended', this.stopInterval);

// watch-position sync — fires every 5 s while playing
storeVideoPosition() {
  const payload = {
    id: this.video.id,
    position: Math.ceil(this.player.currentTime()),
  };
  this.video.user_watch = {
    ...(this.video.user_watch || {}),
    position: payload.position,
  };
  this.markWatch(payload); // Vuex action → Rails API PATCH /watches/:id
}

4. SSR + hydration without layout shift

Because Video.js requires a real DOM, the player component is wrapped in a <client-only> tag in Nuxt. The server renders the video metadata, title, and channel info (crawlable by search engines) while the player hydrates client-side after JavaScript loads — no layout shift because the player slot is sized with CSS before hydration.

Results / What Changed

• Full Hebrew RTL layout across every page — no per-component dir overrides needed
• Video titles, channel pages, and category routes are indexed by search engines via SSR
• Watch position resumes cross-device — creators report viewers completing more long-form lessons
• English toggle works without a page reload — Vuetify + i18n switch both layout direction and copy simultaneously

Stack

Nuxt 2.15 · Vue 2 · Vuetify 2 (RTL) · @nuxtjs/i18n · Video.js 7 · Axios · Rails 7 API · Google Cloud Storage

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Building an internationalized or RTL web platform? Get in touch.

Originally published on the Northbeam Technologies Insight.

Comments

[Franco Ortiz]

Good writeup, the "RTL has to be the default at every layer" point is something you only learn by shipping one of these.

Since you do this across client projects: the layout layer you have to solve per-project, but the translation pipeline you can standardize. I built i1n (i1n.ai) for that part, locale JSONs as source of truth, AI translation with context, typed keys, CI check for drift, works with @nuxtjs/i18n files. For an agency it means the i18n setup cost drops on every project after the first. Free tier per project to try it.

[Northbeam Technologies]

Thanks! Yeah, RTL bugs have a way of hiding until you actually ship to real users. The i18n pipeline point is fair — will check out i1n, appreciate the tip.