Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates, Fourth Edition

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Chapter 2 ■ Designing for the Past, Present, and Future
words, all the content in the right column is placed below that in the left column.
As the content in the left column grows vertically, so will the content in the right
column be dropped, correspondingly. Fortunately, there are ways to avert this
and other issues, many of which are explained in Chapter 16.
Incorporating Usage Statistics
Because there is a growing discrepancy in the number of browser versions,
as well as monitors with varying resolutions and bandwidth issues, the Web
user with the most outdated hardware and software continually lags behind.
Therefore, it is nearly impossible to keep a user with the latest hardware and
software satisfied while designing for those who might still be downloading sites
with a dial-up modem, using IE 5.0, and viewing on a monitor with 800 600
resolution. This is why it is wise to base most Web design decisions on global
usage statistics.
Global usage statistics give the designer useful information about the general
population of Web users and allow the designer to create a site that will best suit
as many users as possible. The previous section illustrated screenshots in Figure
2.1 and Figure 2.2 that were taken using Firefox and IE, respectively. These two
browsers were used because, according to usage statistics at the time of publication
(www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp), Firefox and IE, and
their various versions, were used by approximately 93 percent of the Internet
population. Browser version, of course, is just one type of statistic available to the
designer. Here are other usage statistics a designer can use:
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Which version of JavaScript does the browser support, and does the user
have JavaScript turned on in the browser?
What is the operating system of the user?
What is the resolution of the user’s monitor?
Basing a site’s design on general usage statistics is always a smart way to begin a
site design. Once the site is created, however, the designer can then also use statistics
specific to that site. How this works on a Windows server, for example, is
that a log file is collected every day. It collects data that includes everything from
what browser the user was using to each individual page the user visited (see
Figure 2.3).