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revford blog
I've not seen such bravery!
Usage Stats, also Chrome is a sneaky bastard
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:25:21 GMT
Stats day today. As usual, it's a split between IE7 and Firefox, with IE6 in a solid third.
Hits by Browser
| Mozilla hits | 32% | 2558 |
| IE 7 hits | 30% | 2370 |
| IE 6 hits | 23% | 1862 |
| Safari hits | 10% | 824 |
| Chrome hits | 1% | 109 |
| Opera hits | 0% | 36 |
I'm starting to see some Chrome users. Which is great by me, as long as people are moving away from IE6.
It will be interesting to see how Chrome does compared to Opera down at the thin end of the share.
Chrome also claims to be Safari, which is sneaky of it. It would be good if browsers we more honest about who they are rather than claiming to be other software.
Claiming to be WebKit should be good enough, they don't need to pretend to be Safari too.
IE is bloody awful
Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:29:10 GMT
Looking at the usage stats for the website, I'm seeing that just under a third of people are still using Internet Explorer 6.
Hits by Browser
| IE 6 hits | 29% | 736 |
| Firefox hits | 27% | 702 |
| IE 7 hits | 23% | 590 |
| Safari hits | 19% | 481 |
| Opera hits | 0% | 3 |
IE is bloody awful in general, but at least newer versions have vaguely modern rendering engines.
If you're still using Internet Explorer 6, you're missing out on so much of the modern web.
It kinda works for most stuff, so people don't change it, but you're missing out on many of the great features of the World Wide Web and causing unending headaches to all the web developers out there.
You can change this, it doesn't take long, it won't cost you anything, your computer will be safer and run better.
There are many very good alternative browsers out there, you can install a few and see which one you like. I'm going to recommend two.
One is the free software Firefox, the other the proprietary Opera.
Firefox is best for newer computers, it should run on anything vaguely modern, so any machines from 2003 or later should be fine.
Firefox is the very best web browser available today. Packed with great features and excellent support for the latest web standards.
You can get Firefox, for free by clicking here: Firefox
Opera is best for older or lower powered computers, it works well on anything with Windows 98 or better. This is the browser used on the Nintendo Wii and some good quality mobile phones.
Opera is a good choice for anyone. It has excellent standards support and runs well on almost any computer from the late 90s to today.
You can get Opera, for free by clicking here: Opera
New Site Feature, Sortable News Updates
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:26:45 GMT
A new feature for the website, you can now click on the news topic icons to get all news posts on that subject.
So if you just want news about roleplaying, click on a icon like this:
It makes things quicker to find than trawling through 17 pages of posts.
New Icon for Web News
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:51:22 GMT
As I'm on a new icons roll, here is my new Web code and news icon, based on the famous GPL'ed Deer Park Globe.
As per the licence, my edit remains available to anyone to use under the LGPL, GPL or MPL licences. See here for details.
Stats, corrected
Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:06:33 GMT
Stats eh? Well, it looks like the "this weeks" stats I had were wrong. I'd made a sorting error that was giving me an almost random seven days, instead of the last seven.
That will teach me to reuse old code without double checking what it does. :)
Hits by Browser
| IE 7 hits | 14% | 472 |
| IE 6 hits | 40% | 1281 |
| Firefox hits | 27% | 895 |
| Safari hits | 14% | 457 |
| Opera hits | 0% | 21 |
The new order puts Opera down to it's expected traffic level.
IE and Firefox and Safari gain slightly as a result, the foul IE6 getting a giant leap.
Users by OS
| WinXP users | 55% | 89 |
| Vista users | 11% | 19 |
| MacOS users | 4% | 7 |
Windows dominance slips down to a combined 66%, but it's still Windows XP that towers over everything.
Usage stats for the week
Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:32:17 GMT
Everyone loves stats, so here is the breakdown of site traffic for the last week.
Hits by Browser
| Firefox hits | 24% | 1141 |
| IE 7 hits | 38% | 1809 |
| IE 6 hits | 15% | 743 |
| Safari hits | 7% | 365 |
| Opera hits | 12% | 605 |
Internet Explorer continues to dominate the browser share, with 53%. At least the fairly poor IE7 is gaining against the dreadful IE6.
Safari for Windows doesn't seem to have been very popular, I only seem to get a hit from Safari for Windows once a month, if that. Most Safari users are Mac users sticking to the default browser, much as IE users are for Windows.
I've yet to see a single hit from Google Chrome.
Opera remains a popular choice. Most places I see Opera as listed less than 1%, but I usually see between 10% and 15% here. No doubt it's an excellent browser with strong standards support and wide compatibility. Strange here should get such a large share of Opera users.
Users by OS
| WinXP users | 70% | 408 |
| Vista users | 8% | 47 |
| MacOS users | 5% | 31 |
Windows is so far ahead it's not even funny, 78% Windows and 5% Mac, leaving 17% others.
Website Usage Stats
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:29:34 GMT
Always of interest to me is the share of Browsers and OSs that access the site. Based on this I can plan changes to the site that best fit the way people access it.
Here is the current usage share of my site, it should update daily with the last 30 days of traffic and OS by percentage.
It's 51% Internet Explorer, 24% Firefox, 16% Opera and 5% Safari in the browser count. On the OS count, it's 82% Windows, 6% Mac.
HTML5
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:13:55 GMT
Playing about with my sitebuild code, a switch to HTML5 would be so easy now.
My sitebuild code is a collection of Perl and Bash scripts I use to simplify the creation and updating of this website.
To go from HTML 4.01 Strict to HTML5, I have to switch this code:
For this:
A simple change to the code and all my pages validate as HTML5, so mechanically I'm all set.
Only slight problem is that the HTML Validator extension for Firefox I rely on, doesn't cover HTML5 yet. Being based upon algorithms by the W3C, who now have HTML5 checking in beta, it should gain HTML5 compatibility when that firms up.
W3C Markup Validation Service BETA
I'll wait on the HTML Validator extension to get HTML5 support, then move over.
Google Chrome
Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:01:47 GMT
Looks like the new Open Source web browser from Google is set to appear on tomorrow, called Google Chrome.
It's a WebKit based browser, the engine used in Safari and Midori, itself derived from the KHTML engine built for Konqueror.
Most interesting, at least to me, is the new Javascript engine, promising much improved speed and more importantly stability.
Also the ability to crash one tab at a time, sounds bad, but it means each tab is it's own process so when one dies, it doesn't take the front end and the whole thing with it. It lets everything else continue.
Everyone promises better stability, soon we can see if they can deliver.
As they're starting off with Windows, the big plus could be a third credible contender for the Windows User browser share.
Currently split between IE and Firefox, with an honourable mention to Opera. I don't know of any Windows Users who choose Safari, but a Google branded WebKit browser could be a big deal.
People like and trust Google, so installing Chrome won't be too scary. If it gets more people away from the dire Internet Explorer then it's a good thing.
Just as long as they don't do a sneaky-dump install, alongside Google Earth or some such popular tool the way Apple did with Safari and iTunes, all should be well.
Chrome in the news
Blogoscoped: Google Chrome, Google’s
Browser Project
Slashdot: Google Chrome, the Google
Browser
Official Google Blog: A fresh
take on the browser
Browsers
Google Chrome (WebKit)
Apple Safari (Mac/Windows, WebKit)
Midori (GTK+, WebKit)
Konqueror (KDE, KHTML)
Rendering Engines
Random Tavern and NPC Generators updated to Pathfinder Beta 1
Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:24:11 GMT
The Pathfinder Beta 1 book arrived today, so I've updated the Random NPC and Random Tavern generators in line with it.
Tavern
Creates a tavern complete with prices, detailed staff and a menu.
Tavern
Pathfinder NPC
This is a more elaborate NPC generator, so far is creates any PC class and race from 1st to 20th level
other than Gnome, who I left out to spite them.
NPC
Behind the scenes at the moment it's just a patch I can remove easily, should Pathfinder not work out for us. But it's working and if all goes well I'll update the main scripts with the changes.
You can access the new code here:
npc-pathfinder.js
With the D&D 3rd Ed code here:
npc.js
Bookmarks in Firefox 3
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:30:14 GMT
I'm almost happy with Firefox 3 now, all the extensions I like are ported over now, it starts faster and uses less RAM.
That said, the new bookmarks system is a royal pain in the arse.
The old system dates back to the early Netscape days, bookmarks were stored in a slightly weird HTML file called bookmarks.html. Nice and simple, this system didn't really change through all the versions of Netscape, Mozilla and all the way up to Firefox 2.
As a simple HTML file, it was easy to parse with a bit of Perl to make a fancy start page.
Firefox 3 has switched this to a lightweight SQL database. Overkill doesn't even start to describe this, a single text file replaced by a database really is taking the piss.
You can export a bookmarks.html file, in the editing bookmarks window, or you can root through about:config and set the option browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML to true, this exports each you shut down the browser.
None of this is as good as the old system to me, if I added a new bookmark, a simple reload on the start page was enough to make it appear. With Firefox 3, I need to restart the browser or go through a mess of menus and dialogue boxes to update it.
As a bonus pain in the arse, the new Firefox system renamed all the & in URLs to &, not a big deal as it's easy to fix, but a pain none the less.
So, I decided to simplify everything and manage the bookmarks myself. I quickly settled on a plain text format of URL then description on a single line, any headings would be just a description. The code could tell what is a URL and what is a heading by checking to see if the line starts with http.
A quick example:
Nice and clean, human readable. A blank line between sections is fine.
And here is the code to read it:
First we grep for lines that include words, this cleans out all the blank lines.
On each entry, we chomp the new line of the end, if the line starts with http we format it as a link, if it doesn't we format it as a header.
It all works fine, I just wish I could come up with a cleaner way to take the first word from a string than the split, shift, join that I'm using now.
Midori, a WebKit based browser in GTK+
Fri, 23 May 2008 16:43:42 GMT
While it's still very much a work in progress, the Midori web browser is a great way to test pages for WebKit, that is Apple Safari, without having to go and find a Mac.
While still a bit crashy (that said I'm using the build in Ubuntu Hardy, not a current snapshot) it's very fast and looking good.
HTML Validator now working on Hardy
Thu, 22 May 2008 14:40:52 GMT
Another unbork for Ubuntu Hardy, this time getting the HTML Validator extension for Firefox working.
This was initially double borked in Hardy, once because of the move from Firefox 2 to a beta version of Firefox 3, then again by moving from libstdc++ 5 to libstdc++ 6.
After some fiddling, updating to the latest version from the extension's home page, then installing the following packages sorts out the problem:
sudo aptitude install libstdc++5 libxul-dev
Still two problems to sort out:
- Liferea, the feed reader spins up 100% of the spare CPU time at random.
- Can't receive files using bluetooth
Web Stats
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:15:46 GMT
I've been playing around again with perl scripts to parse web log files, this time creating a breakdown by browser and platform so I can see what I need to be supporting.
CSS tweaks, changes to the site style
Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:15:52 GMT
Just trying to freshen up the look of the site, switched from a tile to a plain background for now. This will keep changing about for a few days until I get something I'm really happy with.
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