Re: [WSG] disallow IE6 to load the main style sheet
Is there a js file somewhere that would allow me to just insert the following into my pages: !--[if lte IE 6]!-- script type=text/javascript src=http://cdn.domain.com/ie6.js;/script !--![endif]-- It would then pop up a warning to the user (but only once per session) that their browser was out of date, and give them links to more modern browsers - like what Google does, but in a way that would allow me to just insert that code and not have to worry about it. Also I think there would be value in having the same warning shown to users across multiple sites - might help to ram the message home a bit stronger :) Like the OP I too want to have something other than just a broken page, but considering the value that IE 6 users bring to my site I am not prepared to spend more than a few minutes to cater for them. Andy On 19 Dec 2010, at 12:59, Grant Bailey wrote: Big companies such as Google and Youtube have had to deal with the IE6 problem on a large scale. Their pages display a warning message to advise IE6 users that the page may not display correctly, and suggest upgrading to a more recent browser. Personally I think it is reasonable to take this approach, given the age of IE6 and its declining market share. However I would be interested in the attitude of other developers. Kind regards, Grant Bailey On 19/12/2010 2:03 AM, Anthony Gr. wrote: Sorry :) !--[if gt IE 6]!-- ... of course. Best, Anton. 2010/12/18 Anthony Gr.ant.grak...@gmail.com: Hi. I think, this example will help you: !--[if gte IE 6]!-- link rel=stylesheet href=style.css !--![endif]-- Best, Anton 2010/12/18 teeweblis...@gmail.com: I am finally to begin to stop supporting IE6 starts from 2011 as the usage has fallen below 5%. I don't want the IE6 users to see a broken page due to no special treatment made for the browser, rather, I would like them to see an un-styled page as if the style sheet has switch off. Can this be done? Thanks! tee *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] IE6 Finally Nearing Extinction [STATS]
Mike I totally understand that you don't want to publicise sensitive information, but I fear that you may have misunderstood my question - I wasn't asking for £ values. My question was what percentage of your revenue comes from IE6 users? Would it be fair to assume that it is much less than the 9.64% of traffic that comes from IE6? I am involved in brochure-style websites but I would imagine percentage of revenue is very important metric for e-commerce sites, but people only ever seem to discuss visitors/page-views etc. Thanks, Andy On 14 Jun 2010, at 22:45, Foskett, Mike wrote: Sorry Andy, Given the competitive nature that exists between the large UK retailers I feel professionally uncomfortable releasing such data. That's why actual numbers were replaced with percentages. Mike From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Stewart Sent: 11 June 2010 13:16 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] IE6 Finally Nearing Extinction [STATS] Mike, Thanks for this, whilst the sites I manage are pretty low-traffic, I too have been seeing IE6 traffic of about 10-15%. By mentioning shoppers I guess you are running an e-commerce site. I would be very interested to know how your revenue is split across browsers. It seems that IE6 users are either in a corporate system using an XP standard operating environment or people using older computers who may be a bit out-of-date when it comes to technology. Would it be reasonable to assume that the second category probably don't spend much money online? - so maybe the percentage of revenue gained from IE6 users may be much lower that 10% ? Thanks, Andy On 11 Jun 2010, at 21:32, Foskett, Mike wrote: Hi all, Ref Links for light reading article: http://mashable.com/2010/06/01/ie6-below-5-percent/ Which basically states IEv6 has dropped below the 5% threshold across USA and Europe. I just took a peek at our own stats for May 2010. A very large set limited to UK online shoppers only. And I couldn't agree less with the article. Our figures are from such a large representation they cannot be readily ignored. While I cannot print the actual numbers, the browser percentages should be fine. I thought they may be of use to others working in the UK and of general use worldwide. Internet explorer only: IEv8: 48.26% IEv7: 37.14% IEv6: 14.58% Other: 0.02% In general: IE: 66.12% Firefox: 16.25% Safari: 8.06% Chrome: 6.89% Others: 2.67% So IEv6 is still at 9.64% overall. Virtually double that stated by the article. Sorry for the bad news but IEv6 is still too relevant to ignore. And by the way who actually said 5% is the ignorable threshold? I'd of thought more like 2-3% personally. Regards, Mike Foskett http://websemantics.co.uk/ This is a confidential email. Tesco may monitor and record all emails. The views expressed in this email are those of the sender and not Tesco. Tesco Stores Limited Company Number: 519500 Registered in England Registered Office: Tesco House, Delamare Road, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire EN8 9SL VAT Registration Number: GB 220 4302 31 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] IE6 Finally Nearing Extinction [STATS]
Mike, Thanks for this, whilst the sites I manage are pretty low-traffic, I too have been seeing IE6 traffic of about 10-15%. By mentioning shoppers I guess you are running an e-commerce site. I would be very interested to know how your revenue is split across browsers. It seems that IE6 users are either in a corporate system using an XP standard operating environment or people using older computers who may be a bit out-of-date when it comes to technology. Would it be reasonable to assume that the second category probably don't spend much money online? - so maybe the percentage of revenue gained from IE6 users may be much lower that 10% ? Thanks, Andy On 11 Jun 2010, at 21:32, Foskett, Mike wrote: Hi all, Ref Links for light reading article: http://mashable.com/2010/06/01/ie6-below-5-percent/ Which basically states IEv6 has dropped below the 5% threshold across USA and Europe. I just took a peek at our own stats for May 2010. A very large set limited to UK online shoppers only. And I couldn't agree less with the article. Our figures are from such a large representation they cannot be readily ignored. While I cannot print the actual numbers, the browser percentages should be fine. I thought they may be of use to others working in the UK and of general use worldwide. Internet explorer only: IEv8: 48.26% IEv7: 37.14% IEv6: 14.58% Other: 0.02% In general: IE: 66.12% Firefox: 16.25% Safari: 8.06% Chrome: 6.89% Others: 2.67% So IEv6 is still at 9.64% overall. Virtually double that stated by the article. Sorry for the bad news but IEv6 is still too relevant to ignore. And by the way who actually said 5% is the ignorable threshold? I'd of thought more like 2-3% personally. Regards, Mike Foskett http://websemantics.co.uk/ This is a confidential email. Tesco may monitor and record all emails. The views expressed in this email are those of the sender and not Tesco. Tesco Stores Limited Company Number: 519500 Registered in England Registered Office: Tesco House, Delamare Road, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire EN8 9SL VAT Registration Number: GB 220 4302 31 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessibility does not matter!
Accessibility does matter, but I do think that many people on this list do get too close to the accessibility at all cost point of view. Lets take the example of google finance http://www.google.com/finance?q=gbpaud quite a cool site using flash and js to navigate quite a large amount of data (make sure you expand the slider at the bottom of the flash graph to change the time scale and see how the list of news articles on the right changes). How could this site be modified to be meaningfully controlled by using the keyboard alone? I would be very interested to hear people's opinions on the following points: • is this site accessible? and if not, please give real examples of saying how it is hard for people with disabilities to use • how could you make it more accessible without introducing a huge amount of extra work for the developers and without having an adverse effect for non-disabled users? Whilst I think there are some silly impenetrable sites on the internet, I don't think web developers should really be that concerned with accessibility - not because it isn't worth it, but because we have hardly any power over what the user sees. The real people that should be concentrating on accessibility are people working on creating browsers and operating systems because they can really do something about it. Andy -- a...@universalsprout.com Andrew Stewart Sydney :: +61(0)416 607 113 London :: +44(0)7900 245 789 www.universalsprout.com :: websites that sprout *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessibility does not matter!
My point about OS/browsers is that they can easily adjust the colours displayed to the screen for the whole operating system, which makes the whole computer more useable by colour blind users. Which is a much better solution than spending hours removing reds/greens etc from your site because it can be adjusted for specific users and will work with every website/application. But to go back to the main concrete point of my email - is google finance accessible? - and if it isn't please explain how. Whilst there are no-javascript and no-flash versions of google finance they are such a poor imitation of the full site, I don't think they really count. Yes they display the same information but not in a usable manner. Andy -- a...@universalsprout.com Andrew Stewart Sydney :: +61(0)416 607 113 London :: +44(0)7900 245 789 www.universalsprout.com :: websites that sprout On 1 Feb 2010, at 10:10, Patrick H. Lauke wrote: On 31/01/2010 22:50, Andrew Stewart wrote: Whilst I think there are some silly impenetrable sites on the internet, I don't think web developers should really be that concerned with accessibility - not because it isn't worth it, but because we have hardly any power over what the user sees. The real people that should be concentrating on accessibility are people working on creating browsers and operating systems because they can really do something about it. Garbage in, garbage out. If you don't structure your content properly, add necessary hooks, and generally show basic awareness of what the problems are and circumvent them, there is no magical pixie- dust-powered technology in the browser or OS that can accessify your content. And, for the last time, can we drop this whole accessibility = non- JavaScript solution according to WCAG 1 slant? WCAG 2 has been out for over a year now, and that's the yardstick we use. And yes, WCAG 2 allows for scripting, or any other accessibility-supported technologies. But that still means that these technologies need to be used in a responsible and correct way...because that's the power over what the user sees. P -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com | http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ __ Co-lead, Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessibility does not matter!
Sorry to ask again, but please explain how the site could be made accessible whilst maintaining the same ease of use? On 1 Feb 2010, at 10:31, Thierry Koblentz wrote: From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Stewart Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2010 2:51 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Accessibility does not matter! http://www.google.com/finance?q=gbpaud I'm sorry, but this is a piece of garbage. They are removing outline on real links, but they leave it on elements that don't trigger any behavior via keyboard input. If they ignore such basics I don't expect the rest of the page to be much better. -- Regards, Thierry | www.tjkdesign.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] The head of the document
Do a search for something small to medium scale, for instance a doctor's surgery, a restaurant, a musician, a theatre etc. (I guess a large proportion of internet searches are for things like this). Now have a look at the number one entry returned in your search engine and examine the head. In my experience it probably won't have any meta data, and yet there it was at the top of the list. There is so much great content out there presented in terrible ways and the success of search engines is that they are able to interoperate all that mess and return relevant results to people's searches. Part of me feels that most SEO is a bit of a waste of time - if you have good content, the search engines are clever enough that they will find it. I am not saying that you should put barriers between your content and the search engines, but maybe all the time and effort you spend forming the correct keywords would be better spent improving the quality of your content. Andy -- a...@universalsprout.com Andrew Stewart London :: +44(0)7900 245 789 Sydney :: +61(0)416 607 113 www.universalsprout.com :: websites that sprout *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites (was: accessible free web hosting account)
On 30 Jun 2009, at 16:46, Jens-Uwe Korff wrote: For an example of a high-contrast version may I suggest to check out the Sydney Morning Herald's Travel section (http://www.smh.com.au/travel/ ). Click on Low vision in the navigation bar (We're going to replace low vision with high contrast since the former can be perceived as discriminatory). The styles you see then have been developed together with a vision-impaired person. They're not pretty, but usable. I believe a better solution to this issue is to work at the level of the browser, or operating system, rather than on site by site basis. i.e creating really intelligent browser plug-ins or applications that are able to interpret the mess on the internet and make it more usable to all. This solution means that everyone could customise their experience to make it suitable for them. On the smh travel site you have only two options (normal and low vision) to cater for the many hundreds of levels of vision impairment. The current situation seems to be that most designers do nothing about accessibility, a few make an attempt and fail, but only a few get anywhere towards succeeding. If a company/designer has a certain amount of time/money to spend on accessibility, perhaps the best way to spend it would be to donate it to free accessibility projects. I think this would probably have a greater positive effect on the web. After all, the few people that do spend any time at all on making their websites accessible, probably aren't going to be experts in accessibility, so probably won't do a very good job of it. Perhaps the WSG would be a good institution for co-ordinating such a scheme for donating money to accessible software projects? Andy *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] accessible free web hosting account
Hi Marvin and everyone else, I have been doing some research into web site accessibility and I would be interested to know a little bit about your experiences of using a screen reader and also if there are any designers out there that have experience of designing for, or using a screen reader. At the recent WSG meeting at the Australian museum I met a designer who had just spent days trying to design a site to make it usable by colour blind users. A much better solution may be for colour blind users to tweak the colours of their operating system so that everything on their computer displays correctly. This also means the user can fine tune the displayed colours to cater for their exact type of colour deficiency. I have heard of software that does this, but it does not seem to be that successful. I guess this is a similar concept to a screen reader that works at the level of the operating system rather than on a website by website basis. I would be interested to know of your experiences of using the web - are there some sites that work fine and others that are terrible? Can you tell if the designer has taken the time to consider screen readers? Are there lots of differences between different screen readers? Your other point about free hosting eludes to another uncomfortable issue - whilst a lot of things on the web are cheap, they are not free. I guess that in many cases a screen reader compromises your use of the internet, possibly making you less likely to return revenue to the companies that are paying for everything to be online. Most people would love to make every website 100% accessible to everyone. However, if it costs a lot of time and money, but returns very little revenue from the small number of users with screen readers, then why should companies bother? In effect this is asking the majority of people without screen readers to subsidise the users with screen readers. Maybe this is the best thing to do, but I think we would all benefit from some discussion on the issue. I should probably mention that I am primarily a flex/flash developer creating very visual sites that I doubt would work at all with a screen reader. But unlike every flash/flex developer I have met, I am very interested in accessibility, SEO, and standards. Thanks, Andy -- a...@universalsprout.com Andrew Stewart London :: +44(0)7900 245 789 Sydney :: +61(0)416 607 113 www.universalsprout.com :: websites that sprout On 25 Jun 2009, at 16:56, Marvin Hunkin wrote: hi. looking for a free web hosting account that can handle side scripting, able to use such technologies as visual web developer, sql server, visualbasic, java script,etc. i am in devonport, tasmania, australia. i do not have a credit card, so a paid account is out of the question. i am a blind web site designer, using the jaws for windows screen reader from http://www.freedomscientific.com so if any one can help out and recommend a good one which also has plenty of large space. and using windows vista, let me know. cheers Marvin. E-Mail: startrekc...@gmail.com Msn: startrekc...@msn.com Skype: startrekcafe Visit my Jaws Australia Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/ JawsOz/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] accessible free web hosting account
Craig, thank you for your response, this is the kind of thing that I am after, however you did quote the most controversial part of me email without the following sentence that slightly moderated it. I do agree that having the web 100% accessible is the goal, but what is the best way of getting there? I assume that we are not there at the moment and rewriting all the content already there is not that practical. The web is moving into many complex areas of multimedia, for example should youtube be required by law to supply subtitles and voice-overs on all its videos? - maybe not, but where do you draw the line? For example there was a site I visited recently where you could control a dodgeball cannon with a webcam in real-time, firing at people in a warehouse somewhere in England. How would you suggest dealing with that site? It is clear that a publicly funded website like that for the Olympic Games should be accessible, but are you suggesting that the same rules should apply to a high-school student doing a website for a school project? - again another tough line to draw. The scale of the internet means that the Australian laws will only have a very small impact on the internet as a whole. Perhaps concentrating on improving assistive technology to cope with the varied state of the internet is a better solution than trying to improve the accessibility of websites. This would also make a lot of the content that is currently inaccessible accessible. Andy *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Outlook 2010
Nathan, I think you are slightly missing the point, I for one don't care too hoots if microsoft uses its own rendering engine or not. All I care is that they use one that works and I think this is the main point of the campaign. I pretty much left web design a few years back because I hated the lack of cross-browser compatibility, but the issues with email clients are even worse - some don't support background images, or even css. Andy -- a...@universalsprout.com Andrew Stewart London :: +44(0)7900 245 789 Sydney :: +61(0)416 607 113 www.universalsprout.com :: websites that sprout On 24 Jun 2009, at 22:57, Nathan de Vries wrote: On 24/06/2009, at 9:58 PM, Matthew Pennell wrote: This is so stupid - the reason that Outlook uses Word instead of a decent rendering engine is because of the same standards advocates complaining so much about IE6 being bundled with Windows! You can't have your cake and eat it too... You seem very sure of yourself on this one, but wasn't Office 2007 launched at the same time as Windows Vista which included IE7 at that time? Also, if an developer wants to use embedded IE within their application they can bundle the version they'd like to use. Why is Microsoft any different? I agree with you that Microsoft not being allowed to package their own browser with their operating system is a farce, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that it's driven their decision to switch to using Word as the rendering engine for Outlook. Cheers, Nathan de Vries *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] functionality without JavaScript [WAS: returning to scroll position in a table inside a fixed hight div]
I think the point is if you should be spending time developing something with a bad user experience that hardly anyone will use. Yes you could implement a spreadsheet app with tons of page requests, but the user experience would be so bad that people probably wouldn't want to use it. On 15 Jun 2009, at 16:42, nedlud wrote: Out of curiosity, what sort of feature are you talking about that can't be done server side (ie, *without* AJAX)? I'll confess to relying heavily on server side JS on some projects, but I did so because I knew those apps would be used exclusively on an intranet where the SOE was known to support JS. The user experience is definitely enhanced from the use of client side JS (it was a kind of online spread sheet used by the finance dept), but it's nothing I couldn't have done, with a little work, on the server side (and *lots* of page submissions). On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 4:29 PM, ravenrav...@mail.ru wrote: Hi. If a website client of yours hired you to manage an actual storefront and you arbitrarily slammed the door in the face of every 100th, 200th, or even 1000th customer, how long do you think would you keep your job? If some js feature bring me 100 costumers i can effort loose 1, which don't support js. Another question that i try to keep all of them, if it's possible. Graceful degradation is better than nothing, but progressive enhancement rocks. ACK. It rocks. Problem: Often some js feature (AJAX for example) is key to the project. Than first i develop server side scripts and front end, which depends on AJAX. And after i finish, if there is enough time and budget is OK, i modify front end (if needed) and write additional server side scripts so user may work without js. If code is good — add such accessibility feature is not a problem. But if you get project with low budget and where deadline was yesterday, than accessibility must first be sacrificed. If project stay alive — you may return to this question. Yes, progressive enhancement rocks. But, if don't use it wisely, you'll starve. Also I do support witches, but that's off-topic. Sorry for my English. I need more practice. Much much more practice. :) Regards. Raven aka Silent Imp. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] returning to scroll position in a table inside a fixed hight div
I agree with you on pretty much everything. My point is that I wish there was more detailed analysis of users with JS etc. Lets take the example of a social networking site that earns revenue by pay per click advertising. If we assume that maybe 10% of users don't have JS, it is also possible that these users are not going to be heavy internet users if they are using outdated browsers an using an inferior (non-JS) version of the site. Therefore, it is probable that more than 90% of the site's revenue would be coming from the 90% of users with JS. In other words visitors with JS installed might not be a useful metric. I accept that mobile phones and many other things could also account for visitors without JS, but that just proves my point further that the simple with-and-without-JS metric is not that informative. I would be happy if I was proved wrong and that these 10% of people with abnormal browsers did account for 10% of revenue, but I doubt it. How about measuring the percentage of the total time spent on the site spent by users with JS, or better still, the percentage of clicks on adds by users with JS? I agree that it is hard to fault progressive enhancement, but what about when we get on to flash, silverlight etc. With those technologies, providing a html alternative probably adds significant developer time. I am sure we could all find great examples of sites that are successes and are great examples of progressive enhancement, but I would be really interested if anyone knew of a site that failed because it didn't cater for users without JS or flash. On 15 Jun 2009, at 14:48, Paul Novitski wrote: At 6/14/2009 06:02 PM, Andrew Stewart wrote: If you can improve the user experience using JS (why else would you be spending time on it) then you must accept that the user experience for those 10% without JS is going to be worse and hence they are less likely to buy from you, or give you some kind of revenue. Is it really worth spending all this effort to cater for users that in the end may only account for a tiny percentage of sales? Conversely, if you start out by building a robust site with server- side scripting, and then add JavaScript as an enhancement on top, you'll be spending the extra time catering to those with JavaScript, not those without, and by your way of thinking those are the folks who are more likely to bring in more revenue, so the financial model would fit the demographics. However, if someone's not using JavaScript on your site, they probably aren't using it on sites in general. Rather than compare their likelihood to buy with others of your customers who do run JS, compare their experience on your site with their experience on other sites -- the folks you're competing with. If someone is driven to your site because the competing sites are broken or clumsy without JS, then making your own site work competently without JS is a revenue generator. If you try to cut costs by shutting out that 10% or whatever of potential buyers, you're simply driving them to competitors whose sites they can use. I don't see the bottom-line benefit of that. Ten percent, by the way, is an enormous number. I mean, you have to start out by building a robust site -- that's bottom-line, right? You don't go into it with a goal to build a broken one. Is it more time-consuming to build a site that works with and without JavaScript than to build one that breaks without it? Where would the time-savings come in the development plan? If you're validating a form with JS, you still have to validate it server-side so you don't invite hackers. If you're using Ajax to update the server, you still need to write those server-side modules to receive, validate, and process the data; whether the update mechanism is an HTML form submit or a JavaScript XMLHttpRequest you still have to write the same core back-end code. We can certainly imagine pages such as drag--drop layout modifiers whose user interfaces would likely have to be radically different if pulled off completely server-side, but by far most websites have user interfaces that can look very similar if not identical without JavaScript; it's just their response time that isn't as instantaneous when it comes to, say, forms morphing as the user drills into the options. That said, client-server round trips on broadband are pretty fast these days and people are accustomed to waiting for page refreshes on most sites, so I don't think most people would consider that aspect to be a sale-killer. I don't see, for example, Amazon.com suffering for lack of sales because people are too impatient to wait for page refreshes. I am not saying this is definitely the case, but plain statistics about how many users have JS or flash or siverlight etc don't tell you the full story. If a developer has X amount of hours to spend on a site
Re: [WSG] returning to scroll position in a table inside a fixed hight div
On 15 Jun 2009, at 10:05, matt andrews wrote: Here's a number for you: when I added JS usage stats gathering about a year ago to a large site I was working on, I was quite surprised to find that 10% (rounded to the nearest percent) of unique users were not running Javascript. This was one of the major net dating sites in Europe, with 1 million membership, so it was a fairly mainstream (as opposed to tech/webdev) user population. Many mobile browsers don't support JS. Many corporate networks enforce JS being turned off. Search bots typically don't support JS. Short answer: you cannot rely on JS being there. If you can improve the user experience using JS (why else would you be spending time on it) then you must accept that the user experience for those 10% without JS is going to be worse and hence they are less likely to buy from you, or give you some kind of revenue. Is it really worth spending all this effort to cater for users that in the end may only account for a tiny percentage of sales? I am not saying this is definitely the case, but plain statistics about how many users have JS or flash or siverlight etc don't tell you the full story. If a developer has X amount of hours to spend on a site, then it is possible that the most effective way to increase revenue of that site might be to forget about people without JS etc and just create the best experience for the majority of internet users. Sorry if this sounds a bit like heresy. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
