No Mod Required » browsers

Internet Explorer 8 Released

rob — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:16:08 +0000

Much to digest, and I haven't even downloaded it yet, so the best thing I've seen so far is this viral ad they're running to support the launch:

They've got a whole youtube channel set up. It's funny stuff.

Beyond that, as I announced on Twitter today, I'm no longer supporting IE6 for future development. Obviously at work I'll have to support whatever I'll have to support, but on my own projects I'll be ignoring IE6 completely from here on in and I couldn't be happier.

Congrats to the IE team.

No Matter What the Numbers Say- IE6 Support Here Ends With IE8's Release

rob — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:07:26 +0000

Right now Internet Explorer 6 averages about 10-12% of my traffic here (11% for the past month.) While I won't dismantle existing support mechanisms, I will no longer test new features in IE6 and going forward I will not support or test for IE6 for the new version of the site.

The good news is, I rarely do anything here that will tax IE6 heavily and the redesign will likely be architected in such a way that it will probably work pretty well in IE6 even without specific attention. The bad news is, 11% equals about 6000 people and the thought of annoying, even slightly, that many folks over a month worries me. The thing is, I just can't support three versions of a browser, especially when one of them is such an odd man out. IE7/IE8 are comfortably supportable browsers. IE6 plainly sucks.

Spurred on by this:

Microsoft: IE 8 won't be done until 2009

So I've got to draw a line in the sand.

Now if I can just convince them to do the same at work…

Free Web Based Screen Reader Service

rob — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:28:56 +0000

If you're already working on accessible sites this may not be of interest to you, but if you're not and you've wondered what your web pages sound like when read by a screen reader, then this link is for you.

I know when I first started paying attention to accessibility and wanted to understand how the changes I was making would sound to users with screen readers I was initially confused by the myriad options and scared off by the cost of some of the tools. I eventually worked through it, with a couple of free tools, but it took some digging. This web-based service from the University of Washington clears up any confusion:

WebAnywhere: A Screen Reader On the Go

WebAnywhere is a non-visual interface to the web that requires no new software to be downloaded or installed.It works right in the browser, which means you can access it from any computer, even heavily locked-down public computer terminals.WebAnywhere enables you to interact with the web in a similar way to how you may have used other screen readers, such as JAWS or Window-Eyes,

Fun With Numbers – or- WTF? Vista Growing Faster Than Mac OS?

rob — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:59:33 +0000

The following chart only tells part of the story (both based on the specific demographics of this site and for the fact that XP is off the chart) and is really only offered up for perspective on what Apple is up against in their battle with Microsoft for OS dominance. Apple has made healthy gains in the OS market share race over the past few years, so keep that in mind when you look at the following chart.

That said, it is interesting to see the much maligned Vista zooming past Mac OS over the past few months. Apple fans, think about how tough Apple's job is here. If the tech press is to be believed, Vista is an abject failure*, but yet… in September, this site saw nearly three times the number of Vista visitors versus overall Mac OS visitors.

For all the gains, there's still a long way to go.

As a note, the spikes in March are due to landing on the home page of Slashdot. Lots of Apple and Linux heads on Slashdot.

Here are the numbers:

Month	Visits	Mac OS Visits	Mac OS %	Vista Visits	Vista %	Linux Visits	Linux %	XP Visits	XP %
Jan-07	8718	661	7.58%	13	0.15%	39	0.45%	7,405	84.94%
Feb-07	11875	891	7.50%	102	0.86%	69	0.58%	9,833	82.80%
Mar-07	15284	1133	7.41%	282	1.85%	90	0.59%	12,510	81.85%
Apr-07	15548	1162	7.47%	393	2.53%	120	0.77%	12,752	82.02%
May-07	15274	1190	7.79%	469	3.07%	143	0.94%	12,381	81.06%
Jun-07	19060	1361	7.14%	788	4.13%	193	1.01%	15,428	80.94%
Jul-07	28853	2347	8.13%	1704	5.91%	339	1.17%	22,920	79.44%
Aug-07	19481	1528	7.84%	1378	7.07%	213	1.09%	15,343	78.76%
Sep-07	27460	1923	7.00%	2120	7.72%	285	1.04%	21,577	78.58%
Oct-07	28224	2249	7.97%	2282	8.09%	305	1.08%	21,774	77.15%
Nov-07	29572	2389	8.08%	2742	9.27%	331	1.12%	22,466	75.97%
Dec-07	27850	2338	8.39%	2949	10.59%	315	1.13%	20,541	73.76%
Jan-08	28478	2302	8.08%	3676	12.91%	375	1.32%	20,668	72.58%
Feb-08	27440	2323	8.47%	3658	13.33%	519	1.89%	19,427	70.80%
Mar-08	70377	7851	11.16%	9418	13.38%	5076	7.21%	44,845	63.72%
Apr-08	34714	2760	7.95%	5172	14.90%	452	1.30%	24,514	70.62%
May-08	38469	2876	7.48%	6020	15.65%	413	1.07%	27,146	70.57%
Jun-08	35052	2402	6.85%	5718	16.31%	441	1.26%	24,462	69.79%
Jul-08	38298	2861	7.47%	6441	16.82%	620	1.62%	26,198	68.41%
Aug-08	36360	2851	7.84%	6447	17.73%	610	1.68%	24,352	66.97%
Sep-08	47997	3162	6.59%	8639	18.00%	587	1.22%	32,891	68.53%

*For full disclosure's sake I'm actually a regular Vista user and quite like it (madness, I know) and I just picked up a Dell mini running Ubuntu.

Google Chrome So Far- 1.73% Market Share

rob — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:27:31 +0000

At least with my sites. Over the two weeks it's been live I've seen 26567 visits at the sites I have analytics for and 462 of them have been with Chrome.

Admittedly, the vast majority of those visits have been to this site, so it's not as broad a sampling as I would like, but it's still and interesting number after just two weeks.

For reference here are the DrunkenFist.com numbers for the two weeks it's been out

Browser	Number of Visits	Percentage
1. Firefox	11,279	48.76%
2. Internet Explorer	9,358	40.45%
3. Safari	890	3.85%
4. Opera	556	2.40%
5. Chrome	399	1.72%

As you can see Chrome is nipping close at Opera's heels. Can Safari be far behind? We'll see how it all plays out.

In case you were wondering… YES I do love the fact that Firefox browsers are the #1 browser of choice of DrunkenFist.com visitors.

What are other people seeing in terms of Chrome adoption?