On 5/8/00 12:29 PM Jeremy Wadsack ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>Analog currently recognizes "SunOS", "AIX", "Linux", "BSD", "IRIX", "HP-UX",
>"OSF1", etc as "Unix", which is, presumably, hard coded into the program.
>Does
>it recognize MINIX? Where does DOS or CP/M go (are there web browsers for
>CP/M?)?
>
>On the otherhand, I see these as (a) very barely qualifying as OSes (kind of
>like WebTV) and (b) likely to be much more diverse than any other OS until a
>major shakedown, which shouldn't occur for another few years yet. These are
>really User Agents, as well as OSes and would be listed in your browser
>summary.
>If there were a way to qualify all these browsers as "one" category, maybe
>that woud be a more proper solution.
First, WebTV is almost 1% of hits at many sites and over 5% at a few.
That is a significant share. WebTV ranks above all Unix like systems
combined at some of my sites, and is never lower than fourth after
Windows, Mac, and Unix like systems. There is a web browser for CP/M-80
but it has a share of less than 1/100 of 1% at my sites. Not something I
would compare to WebTV. Feel free to dismiss CP/M-80, but not WebTV.
There are some interesting conceptual issues raised by the 'Platform'
concept. I'll start with a simple one. If I'm running Netscape on a
Macintosh then Macintosh is obviously the platform. If I have a WebTV
then WebTV is obviously the platform. But what happens if I'm running the
WebTV emulator on a Macintosh?
The WAP protocol phones are a more complex, but similar, problem. WAP is
a protocol, not a platform. Right at the moment, for the purpose of this
report, it would be nice to group all WAP requests as if they were a
platform. But when/if WAP becomes alot more common, then I would want a
report listing brands, like 'Nokia WebPhone'. I suppose that means that
WAP would be a category, like Windows and Nokia would be a sub-item like
Windows 98. But it isn't really that simple, I can run a WAP browser on
any traditional platforms as well as on the phones, what does that get
listed as?
Part of the problem is that there isn't any good way to detect a WAP
capable browser. That isn't really our problem, it's WAPs problem, but it
does interact with this report. There isn't any simple way for Analog to
know which agent strings are WAP. The WAP FAQ lists about 30 distict WAP
platforms and only about half of them are easily detected as WAP capable.
There are sure to be more, any hard coded solution will get dated very
quickly.
I'm rambling, but I just thought I'd point out that this is far from a
trivial problem.
Jason
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Dr. Seuss books . . . can be read and enjoyed on several levels. For
example, 'One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish' can be deconstructed
as a searing indictment of the narrow-minded binary counting system.
-- Peter van der Linden, Expert C Programming, Deep C Secrets
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