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Browsers
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Figure 1. Graphics and text can
render differently on browsers. |
A major element of the Web’s popularity is the cross-platform ability of
HTML. A web site can be run on one type of computer and all other types of
computers can access and display the content. However, HTML is a markup
language, not a layout language. Using it for layout, combining text with
graphics, and trying to include other technologies, can be a complicated mess if
you have to verify that the site looks perfect on all browsers, on all
platforms. Figure 1 shows an example of a company using graphics for their logo
at the top of a page, then a line of text links below for a menu of content
sections. Notice how the intended page would have all the menu items on one
line, but because the window width was too narrow, the phrase ‘About
Us’ was wrapped to a second line (in this contrived example). Problems
like this are unfortunately quite common on the web. This could be related to
font settings, window settings or just subtle differences in the way different
platforms render items from a web page.
Generally it is not time-efficient to design for every available platform and
browser. There are several hundred web browsers and over one hundred
different operating systems. In most design projects you can accomplish 80% of
the work in 20% of the time. This is often referred to as the 80/20 rule. The
break in value of time can be more or less than 80% depending on the project,
but the same principle applies – at some point it takes too much effort to
design further. This is true in web site design as anywhere else. You can spend
lots of time testing your design on each available platform, but if you know
what browsers your visitors have, then you can focus on designing for the most
popular and make your work more efficient.
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Figure 2. The Browser Report tells you the percent of visits
for each browser so you can design for the majority of visitors. |
The Browser Report in Figure 2 shows the top
few browsers (or ‘user agents’) used to visit the site. The top entries
are usually versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
Thereafter you may see some more obscure browsers and the balance will usually
be robots (which you can inspect in detail in the Known
Robots report.) By adding up the values in the % of Visits column,
you can determine which browsers comprise the top 80% and choose just to test
for those. Alternately, you may see an obvious break in the values which makes
more sense to limit at. Or you might select to test with all major browser
versions listed in the first page. Whatever your rule, you can increase the
efficiency of your design testing by knowing which browsers your visitors use
and testing for those. As time passes, new browsers come out, and popularity
changes, so you should regularly monitor this report (and other design reports)
and change your site as needed to keep in step with your visitors.
Operating Systems and Platforms
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Figure 3. The Platform Report gives
insight to visitors’ operating systems. |
Unfortunately, a given browser version may not even render the same on
different platforms. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 on Macintosh OS 9 lays out
pages differently than the same version on Windows 2000. So it is also important
to know which platforms your users have. Figure 3 shows an excerpt of the
Platform Report, which shows what
operating systems visitors have. For operating systems that can run on different
hardware, the CPU architecture is given, for example, ‘Linux
x86’ or ‘Macintosh PPC.’ Again, depending on
your design rule, you can effectively choose the most efficient platforms to
focus on when testing.
As you are not usually concerned about robots when designing, the Platform
Report aggregates all known robots into a single listing, ‘(Known
Robots)’. It also aggregates all user agents that do not include operating
system information into the listing ‘(Unknown)’. These are usually
also robots of some kind, so you can ignore these too when choosing platforms
for testing.
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Browsers
Operating Systems and Platforms