Re: Frames in WebTV (was RE: NOFRAMES)

From: Christian Smith <csmith@barebones.com>
Date: Tue, May 30, 2000, 12:45 PM

>> > all WebTV traffic goes thru a caching server
>>
>> Strictly speaking, that statement is incorrect.
>
> In what sense is this incorrect? The WebTV user agents don't use caching
> servers at all?

The statement made was too absolute.  The traffic may be cached, or not.
A more accurate statement would be:

 Some WebTV traffic may go through a caching server.

>> In addition, a caching server could be sending across a "WebTV" user
>> agent string in its HTTP requests, which would then imply that the
>> numbers given for WebTV underestimate the true number of WebTV client
>> "hits" received by the statmarket site or any other website browsed by a
>> WebTV user.
>
> That was my point. You can't make any assumptions about the number of
> people using a specific user agent to visit a site when/if that user agent
> is by default designed to use a caching proxie server on the ISPs end.

That is a valid point.

> Clearly the StatMarket numbers do provide some count of WebTV access
> (based on Richard's latest post) but the basic principle still holds true.
> The numbers themselves are virtually useless because of the use of caching
> proxie servers.

The numbers  are far from useless.  The numbers clearly show a lowerbound
(i.e. you may have _more_ WebTV clients than the numbers indicate, but
certainly not _less_).

Which, if we are to believe the statmarket numbers posted by Richard:

From: Richard T Taylor <richard.t.taylor@marchFIRST.com>
Date: Tue, May 30, 2000, 12:01 PM

> ---- Browser usage breakdown, who uses what specific type of browser
> 63% = MSIE 5.x and up
> 17% = MSIE 4.x
> 16% = Netscape 4.x
> 1.4% = MSIE 3
> 1% = Netscape 3
> ..7% = MSIE 2
> ..02% = Netscape 2
> ..02% = Opera 3
>
> ---- Operating System, who is using what
> Windows 98 - 64.3%
> Windows 95 - 20.8%
> Windows NT - 6.2%
> Windows 2000 - 1.2%
> Macintosh - 3.1%
> WebTV - .68%
> Windows 3.x - .35%
> Linux - .29%
> SunOS - .11%
> --------------------------

Obviously in general you can't really compare OS numbers vs. browser numbers
because of the overlaps (except WebTV essentially runs its own browser), but
am I the only one who finds humor that:

WebTV .68%  >  Linux .29%  >  SunOS .11%  >  Opera .02%

?

Tantek (who is now working on WebTV browser stuff in addition to Tasman, and
is probably not supposed to find humor in those numbers.).

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Received on Tuesday, 30 May 2000 19:30:50 UTC