Re: Some stats on browsers in use

At 07:44 AM 12/19/2000 , Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Remember, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics (and proxies). But this
>might be a useful way to get a "feel" for what is out there.

Be -very- careful about browser statistics; usually the way they
are gathered is at best shaky and at worst blatantly exclusive of
certain browsing environments.

1.  80% of the surfing is done by 20% of the people.  Those 20%
     generate 80% of the traffic, which means that they are 
     overproportionally represented in browser stats.  Those 20%
     also have the latest and newest browsers and hardware, which
     means they skew the browser stats toward the newer browsers.

2.  Many aggregate browser stats are gathered by using an image
     which is stored on the aggregator's web site but referenced
     from the site to be measured; this means that anyone who is
     unable to view graphics _will not be counted_.

See also my essay at:

http://www.awarecenter.org/tips/browser_stats.html

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                    http://kynn.com/
Director of Accessibility, Edapta               http://www.edapta.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://www.idyllmtn.com/
AWARE Center Director                      http://www.awarecenter.org/
What's on my bookshelf?                         http://kynn.com/books/

Received on Tuesday, 19 December 2000 13:50:00 UTC