A more worrisome statistic is how much of the web is non-English speaking (specifically the huge projections for China). Should you also dedicate, say, 20% of your project time to translating into Chinese? Or maybe 10% for Spanish? etc. etc.
It's all about knowing your audience. If you're ok that the 5% of your audience that's non-English speaking (to use a conservative number) can't access your site, why do you need to worry about 5% that uses Macs and can't access your site? 5% is 5%. What about the population of the disabled who use alternative browsers? And if you're developing in Canada, can you ignore the French translation of your site and rule out Quebec (and probably violate some provincial laws in the process)? Or build a MSIE/Win app and deploy it for all the Mac users at the local design firm? And the folks *without* web access? What about them :) So take a look at the current web logs (you do look at your web logs, right?) and see what browsers, versions, platforms, and charactersets are being used. That might help guide the development efforts -- not simply generalizations like "5% of the population is Mac". As an aside, the open source log analyzer awstats generates some really straightforward data from apache and iis logs as far as browsers go (Sure, you could also just import the logs in Excel and run the analysis yourself, but this is an easy, daily update). Little quirky to install, but really useful IMHO. Regards, John Paul Ashenfelter CTO/Transitionpoint [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Adam Wayne Lehman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "CF-Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 12:16 PM Subject: RE: CFC-based GPL web HTML editor > Look, if only 100 people used the internet, then disregarding 5% would > be acceptable. 2004 projections for people online worldwide is 710-945 > million. > So are you saying that 35-74 million users aren't worth your time? There > are plenty of Javascript and Flash based WYSIWYGs. > > Adam Wayne Lehman > Web Systems Developer > Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health > Distance Education Division > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Thane Sherrington [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 11:58 AM > To: CF-Talk > Subject: RE: CFC-based GPL web HTML editor > > At 11:37 AM 9/16/03 -0400, Adam Wayne Lehman wrote: > >Umm... I hate to break it to you, but people *do* use Macs, and you > >can't just ignore users just cuz they are a minority. > > That depends. If 5% of users are non-IE users, then I can't really > spend > more than 5% of my development time on making things work for them, can > I? That's the downside to the non-IE compatible browsers. Remember > when > word processors *had* to be WordStar file compatible? It's the same > thing > with browsers. I'm all for competition, but browser companies should > take > note of OpenOffice - it can read MS Word formats well, and that's what's > > making it successful. > > > T > > Tired of your bookmarks/favourites being limited to one computer? Move > them to the Net! > www.stuffbythane.com/webfavourites makes it easy to keep all your > favourites in one place and > access them from any computer that's attached to the Internet. > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=t:4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm
