cazmockett.com

As web designers, we all know how important it is that you are aware of your target audience, and what sort of browser they might be using to view your sites.

I was idly fiddling with the Sitemeter Stats for my blogs today, and was intrigued by the variation in browser share between them – largely reflecting their readerships, and how “geeky”/computer literate the visitors may be. They’re all hosted on Blogger and have referrals from a variety of sources.

First up, this blog shows the largest number of different browers – even getting a few percent of views with Konqueror and Opera 9. I see 2% of folks are still straggling along with Netscape 5 too! The majority are on Firefox 2 – just edging IE7 by 6%. I guess this wide spread of browsers reflects the “geekery” of the content and people using niche browsers are likely to read webhead stuff!

[Browser Share pie chart for this blog readership]

The second chart is my Rugby Mad blog – the first one I started back in Feb 2006. Although the subject is just limited to rugby, I’m guessing that the readers represent a more “average” web user – the blog was linked from the BBC’s Six Nations blog last year, and I got massive numbers of hits from that. They are certainly a less geeky crowd than above. This is reflected by the stats – nearly half of them are using IE7 – with IE6 the next largest chunk at 28% <sigh />. Firefox has plummeted 20% compared to the geeky blog. And it looks like around 8% read from a Mac (although I suppose some could be using Safari on a PC now). But no Netscape in sight!

[Browser Share pie chart for my RugbyMad blog readership]

My Photographic blog is most similar to the web design one – although there aren’t any die-hard Konqueror or Opera fans amongst the readership! The Netscape stragglers are back in about the same numbers

[Browser Share pie chart for my Photographic blog readership]

Last of all is my newest blog, My Year In Pictures. It’s been running less than a month, whereas the rest have been going for a year or more. I guess potential users of older browsers may have upgraded before this one went live (I think the stats are derived from the last 12 months if the blog has been going that long). The most surprising is Firefox 2 with a whopping 42% share, a good 8% ahead of IE7. There’s still around 18% of users clinging to IE6. Safari and Netscape figure in the few percent.

[Browser Share pie chart for my Year In Pictures blog readership]

So, what does all this tell me? It just shows that with the proliferation of new browsers, while Firefox is doing well in the geeksphere, IE7 is gaining ground – but IE6 is still alive and kicking (us) amongst the “average” web user. And yes, there are still some poor folks using Netscape – people, if it’s within your power, upgrade to a nice shiny new browser!

When I build sites for clients, I’ll always design it for Firefox. Then test/fix for IE7 (some niggles but not major problems) and pesky IE6 (usually requires more tweaks). I’ll also have a look at them in Safari (PC) and Opera 9.02 – there may be slight presentational differences, but no show-stoppers.

For a laugh, I’ll also take a peek in IE5.5 (and 5.02 if I’m feeling masochistic), but I’m not going to waste any time fixing bugs for them. Let’s face it – none of the above readers have registered as using them – and I’m guessing on average, these stats are pretty applicable for most web users these days, no matter what content they are browsing – so why should I flog myself unneccessarily?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Flickr and tagging recently, having just had to bash a load of tags onto my BarCamp pictures.

Lots of my mates are members, and when we’ve got together for socials, we share the pictures via Flickr afterwards. Many tag the images by subject, or use something like Upcoming’s machine tags: upcoming:event=138806, which refer to the relevent event tag, and can be used by Upcoming’s API to display photos from that event (held on Flickr), in the event page on Upcoming. “Old hat”, some of you may say.

The other thing that regularly happens is that folks tag pictures with people’s names or nicknames. Thus, you can see all the photos of me on Flickr (which have been appropriately tagged), whether they be in my photostream or someone else’s. But here’s where we get the problems.

Some people have particular tags by which they would like to be known, as well as their normal names. Ben (74 results currently) is a case in point, who also goes by the nickname of Kapowaz (56 results, some of them the same). Mark Norman Francis (390 pics) (aka Norm! – 2,324, not all of them him) thinks he’s King Of The Britons (122). Adding all these tags by hand every time gets very tedious.

Now Flickr is very good at letting you organise your pictures, by set, date of upload, geographical position, etc. Their drag and drop interface is easy enough to get your head round with a bit of practice.

So I was thinking, why not let each Flickr user asign their own tags to describe themselves. Then give the Organiser Panel the facility to set which Flickr users appear in the photo, and that user’s tags then get applied automatically. As long as you know that a person in one of your pictures is a Flickr member, you ought to be able to drag their icon onto a picture to set up the tagging, even if they are not in your friends, family or contact lists (these could easily load by default in the appropriate new “choose Flickr member” panel):

[mockup of the "choose member in photo" facility, via the Organiser panel]

Or when you come cross an individual picture in your Flickrstream, you can currently add it to a group via one of the fuction buttons at the top. Similarly, you could have:

[mockup of the "add member in photo" facility, in the Flickrstream view]

I’m sure that would save some donkey work on everyone’s part, and would be quite interesting to follow the reference tag trails around Flickr until you get dizzy.

Comments anyone?

Sheila The Sheila has tagged me with a little blog ditty, and in the spirit of New Year I thought I would carry it on. The idea is this:

“For those of you going “huh?”, I have been blog tagged, a game started by Jeff Pulver which seems to be spreading quite quickly. The object of the game is to reveal 5 things about you, which most readers probably don’t know, then nominate 5 friends to do the same.”

So, here are my five “surprises”:

• I had my first photograph published when I was 8 years old.
  It was taken when I was seven, at Darnholm, on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. I used my father’s manual camera (he had set the exposure for me) and managed to pan the shot when the steam train came round a curve under the bridge. Dad regularly submits pictures for publication in preserved railway magazines, and so he sent it along with some of his, and it was published in Modern Railways. So I’m a bit of a closet steam-head as well as nethead.
• I mushed a team of six huskies for a week in the arctic circle.
  We toured northern Sweden and Norway. It was the best trip I’ve ever done, but totally knackering. We ate for England, but expended so much energy, I’d lost 4lbs by the time I came home. My experiences during that week have taught me that teamwork is invaluable, and that plastic is not as good as polystyrene for making loo seats for use in sub-zero temperatures!
• I started learning to play Bass Guitar in 2002.
  I’d wanted to play bass since I was a teenager. Then one day I woke up and thought, “why don’t I just go and buy one, rather than dithering all this time?” Not sure the neighbours were pleased. But my amp doesn’t go up to 11! I started out with a cheap 4-string model, but now have a custom 5-string Iceni Funkmeister, with a purple paint job. I guess I’m a late starter when it comes to rebellion and rock-goddess pretentions, ha ha.
• I’m a PAGB-accredited judge, and regularly visit photographic clubs in East Anglia and North London, to judge their competitions. For some reason, they like my opinions and keep inviting me back.
• Danny Grewcock (England and Bath Lock) once signed my rugby shirt. I was still wearing it at the time. ‘Nuff said.

And I’m going to tag these good folks to reveal themselves: Litlove, Andy Mitchell, Bobble, Prof. John Flood and his RATS, FakeBob.