A little something I thought Arachneans might find interesting. ----- Forwarded message begin ----- From: BrowserWatch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Stats Aren't The Whole Story By Brian Proffitt Managing Editor, BrowserWatch [some intro stuff omitted for brevity --NEP] The people who check these numbers [browser usage stats] fall into three basic types: the genuinely curious, the software developers who make the browsers, and the Webmasters and Web marketing folk. This last group is the most numerous and unfortunately they are the ones checking the numbers for the wrong reasons. This is not to say that the Web development people are in some way evil. On the contrary, they have simply been misguided by the delusion that one browser will render their pages better than others. And I'm here to tell you this is no longer the case. The "optimized for Browser X" phenomenon is a leftover from the First Browser War. In order to get more people to use their respective browsers, both Microsoft and Netscape Communications pushed Web designers to use their proprietary Web page code and label their pages as "Optimized for..." whatever. For a brief time, because the browsers were pretty divergent in their renderings, this idea made sense. But only for a brief time. Eventually, looking at a page built for Internet Explorer with Netscape Communicator or vice versa really did not make that much of a difference, as each browser rendered pages in nearly the same manner. Try telling that to the Web designers, who were convinced that one really was better than the other. Then, slowly but surely, Microsoft pulled ahead in the Browser War, and became the de facto winner, at least of market share. Web designers began to not think about optimizing their pages for Netscape, because Netscape made up such a small piece of the pie. This was the main error Web designers would make, because even as they were tailoring their pages more and more for IE, Netscape itself was being redesigned to accommodate proprietary Internet Explorer codes. Today, the attitude is still very prevalent among Web designers and marketing staffs that have been put in charge of their company Web sites. They come to BrowserWatch to see which browsers are in the lead and then design their pages for those browsers. If we're lucky. Because usually they pick the top browser, which is now IE, and have their sites designed to handle just that. Now, if it were just a matter of design, I would not be so concerned. After all, many browsers today can handle IE-tailored pages without so much as a hiccup. But it's not just aesthetics that are at stake here-it's traffic. One of the e-mails I got this week was from an employee of Opera Software, who asked me pointblank if BrowserWatch counted Opera as Opera, or as an Internet Explorer-clone. He explained that this was a real problem for Opera, because they had to deliberately set their user agent to look like Internet Explorer's. Why? Because, this employee maintained, many Web sites were still in the practice of turning users away if they were not using an Internet Explorer browser. This floored me. While I knew this practice was going on during the height of the Browser Wars, I really did not suspect it was still going on today. If true, this practice is at once both unnecessary and incredibly short-sided. Here's why browser blocks are unnecessary: not counting embedded browsers, PC-based browsers, despite their apparent diversity, really fall into just a few different types. There are the IE-based browsers, the Mozilla-based browsers, and all of the rest. IE and Mozilla browsers render pages so closely alike (save for some minor design differences) that to exclude one or the other from anyone's Web sites is a quibbling difference at best. And "all the rest," which includes Opera, can view pages the same as the other browsers can. This is short-sided because of the fact that too many potential site visitors may be getting turned away for what is an irrational fear that a logo won't get put exactly in the right place on the page. The perpetuating irony of this is that browsers like NeoPlanet, a popular IE-based browser, would get turned away if they didn't identify themselves with IE user agents. So, NeoPlanet masquerades as IE-so well, in fact, that BrowserWatch and other stat-gathering sites cannot distinguish them from IE. Which leaves NeoPlanet outside of many stat counts, and unheard of by many Web designers. The solution to this mess is twofold and is laid at the Web designers' collective feet. First, pages need to be tweaked to follow the standard models but forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Whether it's HTML, DHTML, XHTML, or XML, pick one and stick with it. It's not hard to do, and many Web design tools can help you tailor your existing pages to one of these standards. Second, open your Web sites up to all browsers. Why would you want to keep customers away anyway? Yes, you may start getting messages about how your site looks awful in Browser X or Y, But do them a favor and politely tell them to contact their browser's company with the problem so their browser can be better prepared to read your page. And if you get a lot of messages of this sort, you may need to think about settling into a standard anyway, which brings you back to the first solution. Standardization may seem boring or less flashy, but in actuality it will lend your pages more stability in getting rendered and more eyeballs as people from all browser walks of life can visit your site. Still not convinced that standardized pages are the way to go? Try this one on for size: in the coming skirmishes with embedded microbrowsers versus the PC browsers, getting your pages standardized now will give you a big head start in providing content for those millions of users coming in to your site on an embedded browser. Something to think about. ----end of forwarded msg--- -- ...This msg brought to you by NEIL PARKS Beachwood, Ohio mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.en.com/users/neparks/
