[WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences

[Richard Wiggins]

While I personally agree with some of Rich's conclusions, I'm afraid his
reasoning holds very little water if you believe in tuning your site to the
vast majority of your users.

The vast majority of users runs Internet Explorer these days.  The vast
majority of those users are running Windows or Macintosh computers, not
Linux or other flavors of Unix.  At most sites we're talking 90% or more.

Here are recent stats from a large Midwestern university:

Top Browsers

 1.	Microsoft Internet Explorer	555,194	87.33%
 2.	Netscape	58,358	9.18%
 3.	Other Netscape Compatible	9,605	1.51%
 4.	MSProxy/2.0	1,203	0.19%
 5.	-	987	0.16%
 6.	DA 5.0	846	0.13%
 7.	Opera	642	0.10%
 8.	webcollage/1.87	486	0.08%
 9.	contype	470	0.07%
 10.	ia_archiver	449	0.07%
 11.	WebTV	415	0.07%

Top Platforms by Visits 

	Platform	Visits	%
 1.	Windows 98	227,871	35.85%
 2.	Windows 2000	207,795	32.69%
 3.	Windows ME	78,050	12.28%
 4.	Windows 95	37,016	5.82%
 5.	Windows NT	33,836	5.32%
 6.	Others	23,395	3.68%
 7.	Macintosh PowerPC	23,333	3.67%
 8.	Linux	2,202	0.35%
 9.	Windows Win32s	909	0.14%
 10.	SunOS	764	0.12%
 11.	Windows 3.x	188	0.03%
 12.	Macintosh 68K	111	0.02%

This data is from last Spring (during the school year) from a version of
Webtrends that probably didn't know how to report Windows XP. Now bear in
mind that these stats are from a university, where you'd expect a higher
penetration from Unix, Linux, etc users than at other places.  

So I'm afraid Mr. Kulawiec's appeal to support the "power users" simply
isn't very scientific.  (Anyone who thinks you need to run a flavor of  Unix
to be a power user needs read MaximumPC, or visit my office or my basement
sometime...) Power users by his definition are in fact a vanishingly small
minority of users.  Tuning your site to serve "power users" (as defined by
RK) would be as foolish as tuning your parking lots to handle Hummers. 

I don't think small minorities of users should be ignored; I think all
official content should be accessible to the blind, for instance.  But I
don't think a mythical group of power users should be over-represented,
either.

Again, I personally don't like Flash as a means of window dressing a home
page.   I don't like it for a number of reasons, the main one being that I
want to get to information, not watch cartoons.  At a given site, there
might be a coalition of "power users" (as defined by RK) and "serious book
readers" and "NPR listeners" and "folks who hate Bugs Bunny" and "people on
dialup modems" and others who would prefer eschewing Flash, but I think the
only way to measure this for a given site would be to do surveys or focus
groups.

Still, if an institution standardizes on a browser and plugin technology and
makes sure the site gracefully degrades for users who can't use the plugins,
it seems to me that's their business.  Of course questions posted to a
public forum invite general answers, but if the customers are happy at that
institution, dogma from folks named Rich (including me) can be safely
ignored.

/rich


Rich Kulawiec wrote:

> 
> On Fri, Aug 02, 2002 at 11:58:13AM -0500, Joyce M. Latham wrote:
> > I would ask what the institutional identity is here.  In our web
design
> > task, we talk about designing for an audience, and, the web design
will
> > identify what audience you hope to attract.  High end, flashy web
pages
> > -- nomatter how nifty -- are targeting a particular audience, and
> > leaving out a large user group -- the people who don't have high end
> > flashy computers with the latest browsers (like alot of public
> > libraries.)
> 
> Well put.  I'll just add that the high end, flashy web pages also leave
> out another group: power users.
> 
> This happens for a number of reasons; here's some of them:
> 
> 1. Power users tend to be more security-aware.  They tend to run browsers
> with cookies turned off or with cookie notification on or with cookies
> restricted to originating domain.  They tend to turn off JavaScript.
> They may turn off Java.  And so on.  So the more of these sorts of things
> you make part of the core functionality of your site, the less useful
> your site will be to them.
> 
> 2. Power users tend to use Unix and Linux.  Features which rely on
> plug-ins that are only available for proprietary operating systems
> on single CPU platforms are not usable by them.
> 
> 3. Power users tend to make their Internet experience more useful by
> blocking annoying content and/or practices.  I'm using a caching web
> proxy that blocks most banner ads; I spend most of my time using a browser
> (Mozilla) that allows me to turn off animated GIFs, resize requests, etc. 
> Other people have chosen to use delayed image loading or to access the
> web through anonymizing proxies, and so on.
> 
> Some of this is just personal preference (I find animated GIFs nearly
> as annoying as the <blink> tag) but some of it has a more serious
> rationale (security, privacy, etc.).  I suppose this is why my design
> cycle has been to hand-code, use Amaya for testing, and then check
> cross-compatibility with Mozilla, w3m, Netscape 4, Netscape 6, Opera
> and lynx.  And then to swear quietly (ok...loudly, you caught me)
> and start over again. ;-)
> 
> More to the point, I would urge web designers to view their own sites
> through (for example) Amaya using a dialup modem.  If that experience isn't
> informative/useful/fun/communicative, then changes need to be made.
> 
> ---Rsk

____________________________________________________
Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com       www.richardwiggins.com