TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I thought it would be nice to put on a web counter, so I did.
What I didn't realise - and you may like to know - is that the counter counts
not only the hits, but provides statistics on how surfers got there (direct hit
or from another page), their domain names, OS, browser, and more.
Browser usage breaks down approximately like this:
Netscape 3 or higher: 54 per cent
MSIE 3 or higher: 21 per cent
AOL 3: 6 per cent
One thing that slows down the design and testing of HTML is that you don't know
what browsers and resolutions your viewers are using. I've never been able to
get a definitive answer on resolution, so I optimised for 800x600. Anyone got
any stats on web users' screen resolutions?
I wrote the HTML at 2.0 level partly because I thought that's what browsers can
handle, but mainly because I coded the whole site in notepad and simply have not
yet learned all tags.
Questions:
Does all this mean we can make free use of the extensions? No more sad pages
empty of frames, blinks, banners, braying background music, and bothersome java
popups that won't go away. Yippee.
Anyone know of any good free counter providers? I can personally recommend http://www.siteflow.com/ but I haven't tried any others.
Incidentally it's quite exciting for the 1st day or two to log in and check your
usage, so you can say something like "hey! someone looked at my pages while I
was sleeping!"
If anyone fancies casting a critical eye on my work - coding, content,
structure, graphics (there are two), whatever - I'd love to hear what he or she
has to say! Go ahead, do a View --> Source!
John mailto:john -dot- cornellier -at- paris -dot- cards -dot- delarue -dot- com
TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send commands
to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/ or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html