Sounds promising, doesn’t it? I thought so. Untill I actually tried to get into the European website.

It didn’t work in Firefox, even though I was using the latest version.

Maybe it’s one of these sites that only work in Internet Explorer. Let’s give IE8 a go.

Nope. And it seems like the two guys in the picture are having the same problem. Those are not happy faces…

Internet Explorer 6 only

Wait a minute, what’s that? Internet Explorer 6 only? They’re kidding, right?

Apparently the people at Visa realised this is not acceptable. A few weeks after the first screenshot, they changed the page.

They are now working to add full support for multiple browsers. Isn’t that sweet?

Safety first!

After last week’s browser statistics, time now to have a look at screen resolutions in Belgium.

Screen resolutions: figures from September 2009

The figures come from a very big Belgian website. They date from August 15th 2009 till September 15th 2009. The figures are pretty representative for Belgium.

Of course there will always be differences between individual sites but overall, the general tendencies will be the same.

Most important conclusion

What a mess.

Screen resolution = width x height

Screen resolution consists of width and height. Let’s have a look at these two separately.  

For the figures below, I added up the top 100 most popular resolutions. (To give you an idea: number 101 came down to a number of 75 users out of a total of 1.3 million users.)

Width

Even more concise:

• < 1024: 2,03%
• 1024 <= 1440: 79,26%
• > 1680: 5,08%

Height

What stands out here is that only 4,08% of people surf in a resolution that’s lower than 768 pixels.

What do we have to with these figures?

Obviously you don’t have to do anything. But you can do lots of things to improve the way your site looks to people surfing in different resolutions:

Width

• If you go for a fixed width, make sure there are no horizontal scrollbars in a resolution of 1024 pixels wide. That way, you only neglect the 2,03% of surfers who use a lower resolution.
• If you call yourself a designer, and if you know that a fluid or liquid lay-out is always best, you also know that you should always weigh up the pros and cons of a liquid layout for every website you make. Try to go for a liquid lay-out that is optimized for a width between 1024 and 1280 pixels. Or, if you really want to show off how clever you are, create a liquid layout that looks good between 1024 and 1440 pixels.
• Interesting articles on Smashing Magazine on how to apply a liquid layout :
  - Fixed vs. Fluid vs. Elastic Layout: What’s The Right One For You?
  - Flexible Layouts: Challenge For The Future

Height

• Put the most important content and action buttons above the pagefold in 768. Take into account the height most users loose by the browser bar and at least 1 toolbar.  
• Put less important content lower on the page. The following 132 pixels are still seen without scrolling by 68,23% of surfers. In the area between 900 and 1080 pixels only 30,51% of visitors sees what you’ve got to offer without having to scroll. Anything below that is only seen without scrolling by 3,85% of surfers.

What about mobile?

• Unless your target audience explicitly warrants it or when you’re absolutely sure it’ll increase your profit dramatically, we’d avise you not to optimize your layout for smaller resolutions. Considering the dramatically low number of users in Belgium it’s pretty much money down the drain.

Is Firefox catching up with Internet Explorer? Is Chrome as popular with housewives as it is with geeks?

And what about the Mac guys and girls? Are they going to take over the world at last?

Browser market share

General figures

With almost 70%, Internet Explorer is still pretty much king. Firefox has managed to convince around 1 out of 5 people to go with their browser. Chrome and Safari follow at a great distance.

Internet Explorer statistics

The question I know you’re all waiting for: so what about Internet Explorer 6?

The percentages in the image below show the division between the different versions of IE.

Translated to the general figures, that means:

• IE 8: 8,41% of the total number of visitors
• IE 7: 51,71% of the total number of visitors
• IE 6: 9,38% of the total number of visitors

IE 6 is still used by more people than Chrome, Safari and Opera combined. Despite all the efforts of webdesigners and some websites to convince IE 6 users to upgrade.

Firefox statistics

Within the group of Firefox users a little over 50% uses version 3.5 or higher. Around 48% uses version 3.xx. Only 2% still uses version 2.

Operating systems

Less important than browser statistics but still interesting to know.

Within the Windows group 54,67% uses XP. Vista is at 41,58% and NT still has 2,25% of diehard fans.

Windows 95 is only used by 5 people living in caves. Or possible a cave, the same one.

Link between operating system and browser

Do all Windows users use Internet Explorer? And do all Steve Jobs fans use Safari?

 Where do these figures come from?

The figures come from a very big Belgian website (we’re talking top 10 here). They date from August 15th 2009 till September 15th 2009. The site in question (no, I can’t tell you which site exactly) had over a million visitors during that period. So the figures are pretty representative for Belgium.

What’s the impact of these figures on your website?

• Make sure your website works in the following browsers:
  • Internet Explorer 8
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Firefox 3 and higher
  • Chrome
  • Safari 3 and 4
• Government sites have to be accessible for everybody. That’s why we advise them not only to make sure that their site works in IE 6 but that the site also looks good. Not pixelperfect, but good.
• You’re a private company? Then you should ask yourself what you stand to gain or lose by not making your site compatible with IE 6. Will it hurt your business if your site doesn’t look perfect to IE 6 users? Or do you make a point of treating all your customers the same?
• Ask your web builder what it would cost to make your website IE 6 compatible. If your website isn’t bogged down with loads of frills, it shouldn’t be all that hard.

One more for the road

If you decide to ignore IE 6, maybe you should ignore Chrome, Safari, Opera and Mac users as well?

Good reads

• Best Practices for Designing Faceted Search Filters
  If you have a lot of products, services or events on offer on your website, this is an absolute must-read. Faceted search may sound a bit technical but it really isn’t. eBay and Amazon have already been using it for years, allowing users to filter results via a number of criteria.
   
• How To Increase Site Performance Through A/B Split Testing
  A really good introduction to A/B testing or split testing, a method in which two random groups of website visitors are served different pages to test the performance of the different page versions.

Handy tool

• Spoon Browser Sandbox
  Web-based tool that allows you to run any recent browser (IE8/IE7/IE6, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera) without actually having to install it on your PC. The only thing you have to install is a single plug-in.

Quotes

• “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” Nigel Hawthorne
• “Effective writing for the web is 80 percent planning/thinking and 20 percent writing.”  Kris Mausser
• “What the f*ck is user ‘experience’ design anyway? I have hundreds of user experiences every day. Most of them are horrible.” Karl Gilis

Movie

• South park: The Website review meeting
  “It’s only a bug if the user finds it and complains about it.” Cartman, of course.

You’re about to fill up your car, an old one, at the service station. All of a sudden, the service station attendant jumps out of his booth to tell you: “Excuse me, but your car is really old. I suggest you buy a new one. But hey, while you’re here, you can still fill up.”

What would you do?

• Buy a new car.
• Fill up and not think about it anymore. After all, the guy did give you some good advice.
• Drive off while trying to run over the guy’s foot to punish him for his rudeness.
• Drive off and never come back.
• Drive off, over the guy’s foot, never come back and tell all your friends about the gas station attendant’s strange idea of service.

My guess is it would be one of the last 3 choices. 

Only on the web

The scenario described above would of course never happen in real life. There isn’t a shop owner out there who’d be that stupid.  

But not so on the web. The many users of Internet Explorer 6 are taking a beating lately. A lot of websites are telling IE6 users they have a ludicrously old browser that’s stopping them from enjoying all the interesting features of their great website. So they should upgrade. Now.

I don’t think so.

Stop pushing your visitors to upgrade 

You are not going to change your visitors. They don’t have to adapt to you. You have to adapt to them. If you still have a lot of IE6 users among your visitors, make sure your site works in IE6.

In Belgium, IE6 is still used by 1 out of 6 surfers. That’s not exactly a number you can just ignore.

Do you really think all these people will upgrade their browser to look at your wonderful website?

Have you ever thought about why these people are still using IE6?

• They’ve got a computer from work. They don’t have administrator rights so they can’t upgrade.
• They don’t know anything about computers. They just use it to surf the web.
• They’re afraid of downloading and installing upgrades. 

You are not going to change that. Don’t stigmatise your visitor. Just let him surf on your site. If there’s a certain feature that really doesn’t work in IE6, tell the visitor on that particular page. And tell him nicely. Real nicely.

That will help your business. Putting up a big red flag telling people you don’t like their dated browser isn’t.