Web Page Help >>> Browser Info
and validating your HTML coding

I truly am not here to start a "browser war" conversation. What I'm trying to say, is that some HTML editors cater to ONLY one browser -- and that means people using "the other" browser probably will NOT see your pages as you intended. Sometimes, not at all.

Beware of the "latest and greatest" of gimmicks that the HTML editors "brag about having" ... what is the percentage of people that will even be able to SEE them??? You need to research, and keep up with the figures of the browsers being used. There's too many people you'd turn away, literally, at your front door (of your website) if you dont!

 
To put it another way ... I've gotten permission to reprint a letter from someone who tracked their visitors. Granted, we all don't have the software available for tracking, and we all won't get exactly the same percentages, but this will give you another description of what I am trying to tell you ...

From: "Edwin Hayward" <ehayward@gol.com> Subject: Slanting your site towards certain browsers...

Dear LE Digesters (That sounds a bit off!)

Much has been said on occasion about the need to target a site towards a certain level of technology. Well, I thought I would just share a few figures with you from my stats, which I crunched using WebTrends' great logfile analysis program. This is not meant to ignite a "browser" war, but to inspire thought and reflection...

Of the visits to my site, 56.59% were from browsers claiming to be Netscape Navigator, and 39.61% were from browsers claiming to be Internet Explorer (Note that I say "claiming to" because from time to time some browsers like to cross-dress as other browsers, for the purposes of stat reporting anyway!)

That makes erm, er, 96.2% of all visits. Of the other 3.8%, only 0.6% was "human" and the rest were search engine robots.

So already, if I limit my site to Netscape and Explorer - viewable content, I am not cutting myself off from too many visitors.

Ok, let's go one level deeper...

Of the Netscape browsers, 53.67% were Netscape 4.x and 41.55% were Netscape 3.x, making a total of 95.12% of all Netscape owners. For IE, the figures were 56.72% and 41.71% respectively, giving 98.43% for versions 3 and 4.

Now, WHAT DOES ALL THE ABOVE MEAN?

Quite simply: If I want to fill my site with nice tables with coloured backgrounds, snippets of Java etc. then around 93% of my potential audience will be able to enjoy the site as I intended it. (BUT) If I start using clever tricks like style sheets, dynamic HTML etc. then I have just CUT OFF HALF MY AUDIENCE!

The moral of all this is that it pays to be behind the leading edge, so that you can keep most of your visitors happy... yet you don't need to drop so far behind the leading edge that your pages no longer look good.

Sorry 'bout the length, but I hope this proves valuable and inspiring.

This analysis was done on about 12,000 hits over a 2 day period.

Edwin Hayward, Tokyo, Japan Free Website Promotion Course : Learn to promote your site simply, effectively and progressively... Sign up NOW at http://www.pr2.com/

So what can you do about it?? Validate your HTML, it's free, easy, and the report that NetMechanic www.netmechanic.com puts out, will make it VERY easy for you to understand what needs to be adjusted and tweaked so you're not stopping people at "your front door" (i.e. first page of your site).

More information about validating, including instructions on what choices to make at NetMechanic (or other validators), on this page.