🚀 go-pugleaf

"Jim Ley" <jim@jibbering.com> wrote in message
news:3ca5ab46.8912114@news.cis.dfn.de...
> On Sat, 30 Mar 2002 01:35:36 -0500, "Jim Davis"
> <newsmonkey@vboston.com> wrote:
>
> >This is what I'm getting at - the difference between the application
window
> >size and the application palette size - which are they raning?  (The
latter
> >would be more informative by far).
>
> and is the only one it's possible to get in the majority of browsers,
> you would know this from reading the FAQ, palette is a term I've not
> heard used in respect to the size of a browser window, but it is the
> client area, it not being possible to get the outer size of a window.

Thanks for clearing it up.  As I said the definition given on the site isn't
all that clear.

"Palette" is more of a painting/design term (although "canvas" is more
appropriate, I think, "palette" is what I learned).  But "Client Area" means
the same thing: the area available for the actual web page being displayed.

Considering that let's look at a few things.  One idea was that people dont
browse with the browser maximized but rather pick a comfortable "column
width".  My theory is that people open their browser as large as they can
the eliminate the horizontal scroll bar on most of pages they visit.

Looking at the Superstats page we can infer (although we can't see directly
as they don't, in my opinion, make very good use of the data collected) the
following for the site being looked at:

+) Most people are using 800x600 (about 56%) monitor resolution.  Almost all
the rest are at 1024x768 (about 30%).

+) "Browser height" for most people is 400-499 (about 40%) but 550-649
(about 25%) make strong showings.

+) "Browser width" for most people is 800-899 (about 32%) with 1000-1499
making a huge showing (about 24%) as well.  ALL widths UNDER 600 account for
less than 3%.

Now remember that these numbers are NOT "Browser width" as the report says,
but, if you like, the browser client area (the actual viewable size of the
web page being viewed).  So, at 800x600 since that's the most common res,
take some sizings (all of these assume a vertical scroll bar is present):

1) IE, when maximized in it's default configuration (all toolbars, explorer
bar present, horizontal scroll bar, and the Windows taskbar on screen) gives
a client area of 568x399.

2) IE, with no explorer bar (which eliminates the horizontal scroll bar)
gives 780x417.

3) IE in "minimal mode": no Windows task bar, no explorer bar, no horizontal
scroll bar, all optional menus (links, address, button bar) turned off gives
you 781x527

4) Finally IE in "full screen mode" (shortcut F11) gives you a whopping
786x572

These are "plain jane" IE on Windows 2000 - AOL makes it own demands on
available height as do things like the office task bar but we won't go
there.

A major rule of thumb in usability is that people only very rarely change
default settings.  However the horizontal scroll bar is a big enough
annoyance that I think many people will turn it off.  So I think that most
people at 800x600 will fall into the first two groups above and most of them
into the second.

So now let's attempt to related this to the Superstats page.  Well you can't
get a client area at 800x600 of 800 or greater unless you make the window
larger than the available viewing space.  However about 60% of browser
widths are 800 or greater!

This points up one of the things that I've come to hate about these stats
since yesterday: not only are the statictics in isolation, but they are
almost impossible to correlate on your own!  The "monitor size" report
claims over 46,000 data points, but the browser width report only 26,000 and
the browser height report over 29,000!  It's very difficult to get a decent
picture.

Anyway, granting that let's assume (a big stretch I know) the percentages
are sort of correct and that just about everybody on the browser width
report under 800 is at an 800x600 monitor resolution (only about 6%, total,
of visitors are 640x480 or lower).  We can also assume that the vast
majority are using IE 5 or above (see the "browsers" report which,
incidentally has 27,000 data points).

In our browser width range of 0<800 there the first big group (about 14%) is
750-799.  From our (simple) numbers on client area size above it's obvious
that these people, at least, are either maximized or damn close to it.  The
next largest group (about 13%) is 650-699.  This doesn't hit our smallest
size (which I think means that people are either closing or shrinking the
explorer bar) but is still large enough to be questionable: are these
browsers maximized or not?

There's a significant number of people (about 9%) under a 649px browser
width.  I think we can firstly assume that this group includes everybody
with screen resolutions under 800x600.  It would also include people that
keep IE maximized at 800x600 but in it's default state.  This last group may
be the most represented significant since most pages would not horizontally
scroll in this configuration.

In the end we can use the browser width to design our content, but the stats
are questionable at best.  Forgetting the vast difference in the number of
data points on the browser width vrs the monitor size reports (which, in my
mind indicates that nearly half the visitors are NOT represented on the
browser width report) we have 56% of folks at 800x600 and 60% of folks
having browser client areas of 800px of OVER.

The numbers just don't add up.  And, again, this is my major problem with
this site: a whole lot of data very poorly presented as small, alien
data-islands with no useful links to each other.

So for whom do you write?  Do these numbers REALLY give you, in and of
themselves, the ability to make a well-informed decision?  I don't think so.
You NEED to take into account all the other information you have.

So, I guess what I'm (still) saying is that screen resolution data isn't
irrelevant.  Oh, ad that the more I look at it the more dissappointed I am
at the SuperStats site.  ;^)

Jim Davis
--
President, Depressed Press of Boston:  http://www.DepressedPress.com/
Webmaster, Virtually Boston:  http://www.vboston.com/
Webmaster, First Night Boston:  http://www.firstnight.org/
Senior Consultant, Metlife eCommerce IT:  http://www.metlife.com/