Categories
Burningbird

Web stats

As of this first week in January, 2009, the web statistics at my five main sites read as follows (only values greater than or equal to two percent are listed):

Burningbird (main page)

Browser stats
Browser and version (if provided) Percentage
MSIE 5.5 4.3%
MSIE 6.0 6.8%
MSIE 7.0 14.6%
Firefox 3.0.5 16%
NetWireNews 8.3%
Safari 6.4%
NewsGator 5.3%
Mozilla 2.7%
Operating System
Operating System and version Percentage
Windows XP 28.7%
Windows Vista 9.8%
Windows 2000 4.9%
GNU Linux 2.2%
Mac OS X 22.2%

Burningbird RealTech (this site)

Browser stats
Browser and version (if provided) Percentage
MSIE 5.5 3.8%
MSIE 6.0 13.8%
MSIE 7.0 8.2%
MSIE 8.0 2.2%
Firefox 2.0 2.0%
Firefox 3.0.5 25.3%
Firefox 3.1 6.4%
Safari 9.5%
Opera 5.9%
Mozilla 3.8%
Operating System
Operating system and version Percentage
Windows XP 39.8%
Windows Vista 9.2%
Windows 2000 5.5%
Linux Ubuntu 3.8%
GNU Linux 2.2%
Mac OS X 25.6%

MissouriGreen

Browser stats
Browser and version (if provided) Percentage
MSIE 6.0 8.8%
MSIE 7.0 29%
MSIE 8.0 2.1%
Firefox 2.0 2.0%
Firefox 3.0.5 14.3%
Firefox 3.1 8.7%
Safari 11.2%
Operating System
Operating system and version Percentage
Windows XP 42.7%
Windows Vista 6.7%
Windows 2003 3.9%
Mac OS X 24.3%

Secret of Signals

Browser stats
Browser and version (if provided) Percentage
MSIE 6.0 8.3%
MSIE 7.0 12.6%
MSIE 8.0 2.2%
Firefox 3.0.5 19.9%
Firefox 3.1 20.5%
Safari 10.8%
Opera 5.5%
*Mozilla 2.0%
Operating System
Operating system and version Percentage
Windows XP 39.9%
Windows Vista 10.2%
Windows 2000 5.5%
Mac OS X 32.8%

Just Shelley

Browser stats
Browser and version (if provided) Percentage
MSIE 6.0 12.1%
MSIE 7.0 29.3%
Firefox 2.0 2.0%
Firefox 3.0.5 24.5%
NetWireNews 16.8%
Safari 6.4%
Operating System
Operating system and version Percentage
Windows XP 38.3%
Windows Vista 13%
Windows 2003 4.4%
Mac OS X 27.6%

Analysis:

I’m not surprised to see the Windows 2000 users, and am assuming the MSIE 6 users among my stats are primarily based in the Windows 2000 operating system. This state may continue into the new year because of Microsoft’s decision to provide MSIE7 to Windows XP users and up, without providing an official upgrade path for those people still using Windows 2000. Not every Windows 2000 machine can easily upgrade to Windows XP. However, if people can’t upgrade their OS, they can upgrade their browser to Firefox 3.x or Opera 9.x, and possibly other, supported, browsers.

As for MSIE 5.5, good golly folks, it’s time to move on. And no, these are not Mac Classic users, as the Mac Classic OS percentage is typically less than 1%, if it shows at all in my site stats. No, I would imagine that most of these people bought a Windows 95 or 98 machine that came installed with 5.5, and the thing is now too infested with viruses for them to use, much less upgrade the software.

Speaking of upgrading, Firefox 2.x users, as of December, Mozilla is no longer supporting your browser. Firefox 3.1 is just around the corner, and is very sexy. Time for you to move, too.

There are few other browser percentage surprises. My primarily tech sites, RealTech and Secret of Signals, feature a larger percentage of Firefox users than my two non-tech sites, MissouriGreen and Just Shelley. What was pleasantly surprising, though, is that Firefox is becoming the dominant browser at the sites. Just Shelley is about the only one still heavily dominated by MSIE.

Safari’s use is increasing, which isn’t surprising because it really is the best Mac OS X general browser, as well as now being available in Windows. Safari/Webkit’s graphics rendering engine is the best, a topic on which I’ll have more to talk about, directly, in a writing I’m doing on SVG.

I would have expected, though, some increase in Opera use. I started last year with Opera at about 5%, and it’s still about 5%. Actually, the lack of change is a little spooky—who ever heard of a straight line in a chart related to the web?

But where’s Chrome? That’s what I thought when looking at the stats, and finally spotted it at under 1% for this site, only. What did the pundits say last year? Chrome was going to be a threat to Firefox? Well, I don’t think we need to dump our Firefox t-shirts just yet.

Based on the trends from last year to now, when I compare this year’s stats against next year’s stats, I predict they will show the following:

  • The number of users of the new Windows 7 operating system will be inversely proportional to the number of Windows Vista users
  • More Chrome users, but Firefox and Safari should still see incremental growth.
  • Fewer MSIE users, with most switching to Chrome or Firefox.
  • After MSIE8 releases, we’ll quickly be able to see who are the MSIE personal users, versus MSIE corporate users, because of the MSIE8 upgrade blocker.
  • We’ll see a significant reduction in MSIE corporate users, as many will get laid off.
  • Mac OS X use will continue incremental growth, and everyone will still be questioning Steve Jobs’ health
  • Opera will continue with 5% of the browser market. Spooky.
Categories
Semantics

Oh look it’s not just us Semantic Web dweebs who noticed

A List Apart has a new article out on the Semantics in HTML5. John Allsopp writes

We’ll start by posing the question: “why are we inventing these new elements?” A reasonable answer would be: “because HTML lacks semantic richness, and by adding these elements, we increase the semantic richness of HTML—that can’t be bad, can it?”

By adding these elements, we are addressing the need for greater semantic capability in HTML, but only within a narrow scope. No matter how many elements we bolt on, we will always think of more semantic goodness to add to HTML. And so, having added as many new elements as we like, we still won’t have solved the problem. We don’t need to add specific terms to the vocabulary of HTML, we need to add a mechanism that allows semantic richness to be added to a document as required. In technical terms, we need to make HTML extensible. HTML 5 proposes no mechanism for extensibility.

On reading of which, I hurt my head by banging it, suddenly and with force, against my desk.

Categories
Stuff

Amazon VOD on Roku

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

A favorite game with Roku owners is to guess which service will be added to the box, first. The game is now over, because evidently, Amazon’s Video On Demand is going to be the next video entry for the Roku boxes.

This puts the box on par with AppleTV in offerings. Well, actually a little beyond AppleTV, with Netflix streaming. Add Hulu and Roku is a video killer.

Categories
Programming Languages

Practice…but not typing

A post by Karl Martino reminded me of Jeff Atwood’s We are typists first, programmers second. Atwood was responding, in hearty agreement, to a post by Steve Yegge, who wrote

I was trying to figure out which is the most important computer science course a CS student could ever take, and eventually realized it’s Typing 101.

The really great engineers I know, the ones who build great things, they can type.

As I wrote in Karl’s comments, saying that fast typing is what makes a great programmer is little different than saying what makes a good carpenter is how fast they swing their hammers.

Fast typing is a by-product of extensive creation, whether that creation is web page markup, a stylesheet, or code. The more we create code, web pages, and designs, the more efficient we get with all of the tools used, including but not limited to, typing.

In addition, times have changed. I have no doubts that today’s generation of kids are speed demons on the keyboard—whether it’s on their cellphone or attached to their computers. A typing class would most likely slow them down.

If anything, what we should be encouraging is more practice with problem solving—the ability to figure something out on one’s own, without having to Google an answer or ask friends on Twitter—not typing.

Categories
RDF SVG Web

Tweaking makes perfect

Not long ago, Tim O’Reilly posted a discussion thread about the importance of practice, and one of the participants in the thread, my long-time editor, Simon St. Laurent, reiterated his interest in practicing this year—both on the trumpet, and in his coding.

I never left programming the way I left trumpet. I simply stopped playing trumpet after eighth grade. I’ve gone back and forth with programming since sixth grade, getting totally into it for a year or two at a time and then departing out of frustration, distraction, or the need to do something else. At O’Reilly, I’m exposed to programming constantly – I edit and write computer books after all! – but editorial is a long ways from actually programming. Even writing books about programming is a seriously meta- activity, one that requires more attention on the communications than on the code. (The code has to be right, but – though this may depend on the audience – the explanations have to do a lot more than the code.) My work isn’t programming practice.

One place I practice is with this site. I still have hopes that I can transform my work with this site into some paying work. At a minimum, I enjoy the tweaking and it keeps me occupied.

In addition, I also frequently re-design this site. Doing so allows me to explore new uses of technology, such as the use of SVG for site design, and JavaScript and RDFa in support of semantics. The practice also helps me improve my use of XHTML and CSS, including how to deal with IE without necessarily having to incorporate massive amounts of workaround code. Luckily, the “in” design concepts today are based on a minimalist design, so if my site is legible and clean in IE, it doesn’t matter if it’s plain.

I’m not practicing with every hot technology; I’ve made choices with how I spend my time. Yes for PHP, Python, JavaScript, CSS, SVG, RDFa, various web services, and XHTML. No on .Net, Ruby, Java, and cloud computing. A maybe on HTML5 and C++. Not necessarily the best decisions, perhaps, as Java and .Net are where the money is made, and the folks in Silicon Valley drool when you mention “cloud”, but I really don’t like the technologies or the environments.

Practice is essential for keeping our skills sharp, but that’s not the only reason it’s important. It’s also a way to constructively deal with the constant barrage of unhappy news we’re subjected to. We may not have any control over warring nations, global warming, or the state of economy, but we do have some control over how we live our lives. And that includes finding pieces of ourselves that can be improved with practice.