[thelist] coding specifically for Australian market

[Paul Cowan]

Hey nate,

> For example, I think I heard somewhere that a bigger % of Australian users
> use Netscape than do so globally. (It's about 12% global, but I thought it
> was closer to 17% down under.)

I can only speak for the site for which I work (if not Australia's
biggest online general-purpose retailer, then close to it). Obviously
our demographic may be substantially different to yours (e.g. corporations
which lock down browser versions on their desktops are probably likely
to frown on people shopping online during work hours), but it's
probably about as close to a cross-section of the Aussie browser
population as you can get... unless Isaac or someone can provide a
bit more variety of stats.

Anyway, we're currently tracking at about 91% IE, 5% netscape, and
the rest proxy servers etc. Opera and WebTV are present, if
statistically insignificant.

In IE, IE 5 vs. IE 6 is split about 70-25; In Netscape, Netsape 4
vs. Netscape 6 is about 83-13.

> Another example (that doesn't specifically apply to Au): When coding for
> Asian markets, it's important to fully use CSS, because font tags aren't
> supported by Asian (double-byte) browsers.

No idea about that... but bear in mind that Australia has an
extremely high proportions of Asian-born residents... so if this is
true, a lot of Australians (English-speaking or no) will be using
such browsers.

In fact, it might pay to bear in mind that Australia has a VERY varied
mix of ethnicities... as just an example, my hometown, Melbourne, has more
Greek people living in it that any other city in the world except Athens.
Not sure how useful that is to know -- but an interesting fact, anyway!

> I'm sure there can't be too many differences, but since I'm serving a
> known, specific geographic audience, I'd like to do whatever
> I can to make it as good and appropriate as possible.

It IS worth considering that broadband takeup in Australia is very
low -- largely because of the ridiculous expense. Connections to the
outside world can be flaky too -- so be careful where the site is hosted,
and go easy on the bandwidth.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Paul