Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 11/13/05 15:37

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

> Per cwdjrxyz@yahoo.com:
> >These
> >stats have been collected for several years from users of w3schools.
> >They likely are not typical of the average computer user, because most
> >users of the w3schools likely know more about computers....
>
> I think that's a central point. TB meaningful for most uses,

But someone designing a specific web site doesn't need to know the
population of browsers averaged over all kinds of user and over the
whole world.

*If* that information was of use to them, it would need to be for the
kind of users who need the content that they're offering.

But looking at the statistics of their own site doesn't help, either.
Suppose their site just happens to be hostile to browser B without
them realising it. Then they'll be under-estimating the number of
visitors who use browser B, and they'd be liable to make their site
even more hostile to browser B - supposing it to be of little
importance to their users - when they really ought to be making their
site more welcoming to it.

> I'd think the stats would need to come from someplace like Google -
> that is hit by all sorts of people.

Even *they* can't overcome the fundamental limitations of the
principle.

While I wouldn't suggest ignoring the numbers entirely, I *would*
counsel designing for browser-independence, so that the detailed
figures (which in any case are going to be hopelessly inaccurate, for
all the reasons that are usually discussed) are of little importance.

And don't forget that the actual browsing situation isn't just a
browser version. What *appears* to be MSIE could just as well be IBM
Home Page Reader; or it could be some other minority browser
pretending to be MSIE to avoid being locked-out by certain idiot site
designers. Even some indexing robots fake themselves as an MSIE
version.

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