[thelist] Drawing the line was Tip o'the day (x2)

[Philippe J]

> and where's the definitive users browser preference stats for a given
> demographic.

You'll never know that. The only reliable way would be to make a first site
totally compatible with any browser, then analyze the stats**, and then see
if your site can be built in a more high-tech way*. I guess stats are a lot
more valid for a single site than the average stats for a few thousands
sites. Maybe one of those thousands site will have 90% of the users with 3.0
browsers. And it won't be seen in the global stats. And the site wouldn't
work if it had been made with html 4+css for instance

When we build a site, we build it for the visitors of this particular site,
not for the visitors of the thousands others sites who gave their stats.


Philippe Jadin


*Of course no one does this. Simply enough, sites wondering which tools to
use should consider to use some kind of content management systems with
differents templates for differents users, and choose two or more tools for
the templates.

**no one ever speaks about the fact that stats are not totally reliable,
because some older clients won't even be detected by the stat software. In
the "100%" browsers, you can count a few % using a browser so old that it
can't be "detected", either because the detection is based on a non working
javascript in older borwsers (which is basically stupid), or because the
browser doesn't send any "client" information. It will be placed in the
"others" category.