[thelist] hits vs sessions

Herzog, Ari Ari_Herzog at Instron.com
Thu Dec 7 11:50:59 CST 2000


I love when people talk about hits.
It means nothing, really.
It's the visitor sessions which speak volumes.


-----Original Message-----
From: jeff [mailto:jeff at members.evolt.org]
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 8:53 AM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: RE: [thelist] Netscape 6 loads page twice


jake,

:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: From: Jacob Stetser
:
: I don't believe Netscape deserves a horrible death;
: while I may prefer IE as my main browser (and
: Macintosh as my main OS ;) that doesn't mean that
: Netscape is itself a bad browser. Considering the
: number of people using Netscape is still significant
: and eventually many will upgrade, it's a fair bet you
: do want to fix things.
:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

according to thecounter.com they logged a total of 554,519,878 hits for the
month of october.  approximately 13% of those hits were from nn4 users.  an
amazing 81% of the hits came from ie4/ie5.  i'm not sure that less than 15%
of an audience could be considered significant.  i'd rate that as a portion
of your audience that you're you want the site to be usable for, but not
enough to warrant the additional development time necessary to make all the
bells and whistles work for.

on top of that, nn6 users accounted for less than 0.05% of the total hits.
not only that, but i don't expect those numbers to change very much any time
soon.  i think the damage to netscape has been done and it's too much to
recover from.

:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: As someone once said here: AOL owns Netscape
: now.  What would happen to your site if the internal
: AOL browser used Netscape instead of IE?
:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

what does aol honestly have to gain by bundling their software with netscape
as the browser?  if they skip on their licensing agreement with microsoft
then they lose the portion of that agreement that places their icon on the
desktop of all new pc's.  not only that, but they run the risk of losing
placement on new pc's entirely.  that's not a smart business move on their
part.  furthermore, why would they switch their customers away from a
browser that has such a large market penetration to something that has next
to zero market penetration, potentially inflicting unnecessary errors, as
the ill-web-educated aol user will see them (but you and i know are related
to a site not being w3 compliant), upon their users?  (deep breath).

i think the thing we're all forgetting is that to the casual user there's no
reason to upgrade to nn6 or switch from ie4/ie5/opera/whatever.  it just
doesn't make sense.  some will do it because they have a poweruser friend
that says they should, but they use it a couple of times and will get tired
of sites that used to work no longer working properly and abandon it, never
to come back.

personally, i used to be a die-hard fan of netscape and for good reason.  in
the days of nn2 and nn3 what other options were there?  ie3 was laughable at
best.  however, i am now quite content to develop exclusively for ie4+
(preferably ie5.0).  while i applaud netscape for their efforts i think it
should have been started long ago and should have  been finished long ago.
i think that in waiting so long they've introduced yet another thorn into
the side of all developers.  now we not only have to develop for all the
quirks of the current mix of browsers we're committed to supporting, but we
also have to code to nn6 as well.  either that or we have to decide to code
completely to standards, building a site that will work in a browser that
0.05% of our audience uses and grin and bear it for the other 99.95% of our
users who will experience problems.  it just doesn't make sense.

bottom line - you should be coding to standards, but don't do it for the nn6
users cause they're not likely to be around terribly long.  do it for the
future of your work, but don't do it to the point of giving yourself ulcers.

just my 2c,

.jeff

name://jeff.howden
game://web.development
http://www.evolt.org/
mailto:jeff at members.evolt.org


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