Comments on: Web design 101: What the audience sees

By: Web design: Catching up from Thursday « Journalists’ Toolkit

Web design: Catching up from Thursday « Journalists’ Toolkit — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:41:53 +0000

[...] considerations include screen resolution (Web only, of course), typography, and the use of color. You can learn more [...]

By: Teaching Online Journalism » Multimedia package: Fat kids

Teaching Online Journalism » Multimedia package: Fat kids — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:30:58 +0000

[...] viewers to appreciate the animated weight scale that disappears off the bottom edge. I’ve discussed this size problem [...]

By: How the audience sees your Web site « J-Scranton

How the audience sees your Web site « J-Scranton — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:56:43 +0000

[...] [Continue reading Web design 101] [...]

By: Teaching Online Journalism » Multimedia packages: Music journalism

Teaching Online Journalism » Multimedia packages: Music journalism — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:29:47 +0000

[...] chastise the designer: This package is 625 pixels in height. Get a clue, would you, please, about what the audience is looking at. I had to scroll the thing up and down repeatedly, which is too [...]

By: Mindy

Mindy — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:41:12 +0000

Thanks, Craig. And note that we do NOT expect all 1280-and-up users to “maximize” their Web browser.

I do expect most 1024 users to maximize, because otherwise, a LOT of sites are cut off on the right-hand edge.

And a final note: You might find a lot of 800 x 600 users in some countries outside North America. You might find that government and school users in some countries are still using 800 x 600. So make sure you check your own server logs.

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:04:16 +0000

I’ll share some numbers from Google Analytics for the past month on the UF J-School site:
1024×768 – 40.87%
1280×800 – 19.34%
1280×1024 – 14.19%
800×600 – 4.84%
1440×900 – 4.72%

By: Bob Stepno

Bob Stepno — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:53:00 +0000

I have no data on this at all, but even with big screens, I wonder whether “preferred browser-window size” isn’t still somewhere in the 750-1000 range.

Personal-habits bias: Even on an iBook, I often have a text-editor open or a second browser window overlapping enough to click back and forth. Maybe it’s because my first computer was an Osborne with a five-inch screen.

Also… Designers tend to get the coolest big monitors and I suspect your readership is skewed in that direction. Any similar stats for a less design-oriented page — maybe a local news site or university home page?

By: Mindy

Mindy — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:59:23 +0000

1. The graphics for FeedBurner stats are nice-looking.

2. I have more than 900 FeedBurner visitors a day, compared with about 300 on Site Meter.

3. I like Google Analytics very much! But I didn’t look at their charts for this.

I thought the FeedBurner charts illustrated well the three factors I wanted to discuss.

Mainly, I wanted to get across the point that it’s easy to PROVE that people are looking at your site in a lot of different configurations (my students sometimes seem reluctant to believe that); therefore, you MUST test in different configurations!

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:43:08 +0000

Interesting that you used Feedburner stats for this. Wouldn’t that just show you the subset of viewers who came in via the feed (which may be a majority in your case)? Do they differ from your sitemeter stats? Are the graphs just easier to copy for this purpose? I’m a big fan of Google Analytics for this stuff, as you know, but I use several such tools in various places. Do we cover using/interpreting this stuff in any classes? Or is that too geeky?

I’m just too full of questions this morning.