evo design - graphics, photography, web

  • Does my website look big in this?

    28
    Nov

    You’d be surprised just how different your website looks to other people.

    According to the tome of all knowledge, Wikipedia - usability is defined as a term denoting the ease with which people can employ a particular tool, or other man made object to achieve a particular goal.

    Usability is not a huge problem for many publicists since most mainstream media is published through highly standardised mediums - such as televisions.  A news reader does not have to concern himself with how his jaw will look on a variety of different TVs since the world’s televisions behave in a very similar manner.

    The world’s browsers perform in a variety of ways, that are often so peculiar as to render a website entirely inoperable

    Unfortunately this is not true for web designers.  The world’s browsers perform in a variety of ways, that are often so peculiar as to render a website entirely inoperable - even though it looked fine when you designed it.

    If you are so inclined and have a variety of browsers installed on your computer - Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome - yawn; you can see for yourself by choosing some websites and viewing them in different browsers.

    Suffice it to say, if you’re not so inclined, that they will in fact look different in each.  But why?

    Well there’s a bunch of reasons really but it basically comes down to 3 things -  business decisions, specification interpretation and bugs.  Some developers will choose to do something in a certain way because of their business goals - to accommodate a certain proprietary technology or perhaps avoid development costs associated with doing it a different way.  Repeatedly Microsoft have avoided implementing a prescribed standard because it breaks an existing technology or interferes with a proposed technology.

    The W3C specfications for HTML and CSS are open to interpretation as is any technical standard.  As a result Internet Explorer might do something slightly different the Google Chrome.  Neither may be necessarily wrong or right; and the right way will only unfold after the passage of time and a body of consensus.

    The human, an ostensibly imperfect being - is simply not capable of producing a complex system without inherent flaws.

    Finally bugs are the irritating by-product of sophisticated software systems.  The human, an ostensibly imperfect being - is simply not capable of producing a complex system without inherent flaws.  These flaws stop things from working as expected and as such must be later accommodated.

    So, we have multiple browsers, multiple browser versions, multiple operating systems, multiple computer configurations, multiple broadband speeds and massively varied levels of user ability.  These elements combine to form the single most painful element of web design - usability.

    You may be thinking at this point, I’ve only used Internet Explorer and I’ve only ever seen Internet Explorer - what on earth is all this other stuff?  And so a few statistics, helpfully provided from W3Schools.  As of October 2008, W3S shows about 27% of users are running IE7 (Internet Explorer), 20% IE6, 44% Firefox, 3% Safari and the rest - the others.

    At the present time this can be roughly interpreted to 50% Microsoft Internet Explorer, 45% Firefox, and 5% to the rest.

    At the present time this can be roughly interpreted to 50% Microsoft Internet Explorer, 45% Firefox, and 5% to the rest.  But this is changing constantly.

    It used to be an acceptable option to simply cater for Internet Explorer users and write the rest off a tech-savvy enough to get round any problems; but this day has gone.  At the very least your website should operate flawlessly in Firefox and IE - but ignore the others at your peril.

    The point is this.  It is no longer acceptable to make assumptions and excuses about what the user is browsing with.  Qualified, proficient web developer’s are equipped and able to ensure cross browser compatibility.  They should also be equipped to work with you and help assess your demographics to prioritise your browser support.  What does this mean?

    If you look at statistics showing browser capabilities for a cross section of websites you will see very different results.  If you were to look at statistics for a web designers forum for instance you would see very strong usage of Firefox and Safari, and always the latest versions of each.  If you were to look at websites aimed at younger people you would see strong usage of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari and probably the latest versions.  However, start to look at websites like BBC News, Times Online - bringing in an older demographic the balance would begin to switch.  More Internet Explorer, and a wider variety of older browser versions.

    The swing would become even more defined digging into parochial sites aimed at older, less tech-savvy demographics.  Firstly, I would like to underline my observations are at the most generic level - and open to statistical criticism but the salient point is this - there is no definitive set of browser usage statistics - it depends on the website.

    So, returning to the point about prioritising development - your web team should know that spending 4 days getting a really nice little aesthetic feature working in Apple Safari, to demo to you on a shiny Apple MacBook, is completely fruitless if an extremely important user web form does not function properly. 

    Usability and interface design must work hand in glove to prioritise user experience.  Bells and whistles should be secondary to a stable platform that users can work with quickly and easily. 

    Just because you use Apple Safari, remember you’re only 3% of a very big pie.

    If you’re ever thinking of getting a new website, ask your web team about their commitment to cross browser compatibility.  Ask them if you website will work on each of the browsers listed above.  Just because you use Apple Safari, remember you’re only 3% of a very big pie.  Your users are way more important than you. 

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    Usability