Nikoport

While being confronted with a question a couple of days ago, if the 800×600 resolution is still matter for the web design, my first reaction was to say that even if it matters, then not much, but after remembering seeing some statistics from some portuguese sites, i have remembered. So i have checked just statistics for 5 different sites with a different audiences, to see if the 800×600 resolution still matters. The results were a kind of surprising for me.

But first of all, a good site should have a liquid design, this way it should display in 800×600, more or less in the same way as in other higher resolutions. I am still trying to convince the designer with whom i am working on websites to start moving into making flexible designs, and the next project i am finishing at the moment is quite a step from the previous experiences. =O)

But back to the resolution statistics – in a specific theme site (geology), having more than 90% of the visitors portuguese – the percentage of users having a screen resolution of 800×600 was 10.59%, in a general shopping site the percentage was 8.54%, a site connected with the children had 8.47%, some web design site – 1.82%, this site on the contrary to the others i have compared has only 2.85%, but the most users visiting my site are not from the Portugal =O)
And if you still think that such numbers as 8% or 10% are not really important, then the fact of not ignoring the Macintosh users, which is more or less accepted across web community, seems to be ridiculous, because for the general statistics Os X users do not represent more then 1% in Portugal.

After seeing that numbers i decided to check on the statistics from other sources, so this what i have found about the users using 800×600 resolutions:

• W3Schools – 14%
• Digital Web – 28% (January 2006)
• tamingthebeast – 10.88%
• Upsdell – 12%
• Jakob Nielsen – 17%
• Game Producer – 2.57%

In short – in Portugal it is still matters, to test sites for this resolution. As for the web in general – i believe that the answer is pretty much the same, there are many users, who are still bound to the 800×600 resolution, and we have no right of ignoring them, or at least we should try to pay attention. =O)

=O)
I would even add, then when in General the 800×600 resolution statistics will drop below the percentage of the Macintosh users, then it will be the time to consider of ignoring it.
=O)
On a more serious note, the phone, palm and smart devices with browsers are becoming more and more common, thats why we should pay more and more attention to them, and they are so far from that “miserable” 800×600 resolution, so i think there is no way we will ignore this resolution in the next couple of years.

Today, while browsing an old book called “Designing Web Usability”, written by Jakob Nielsen in the far 2000 (some 7 years ago), i have found a reference to the idea of distributing site content to the search engines in the form of the. On the page 238 there is small subtitle “Integrating Sites and Search Engines”, where he discusses the idea of integrating sites more closely with search engines. The problem for its implementation was considered at the time of writing – the agreement of a standardized method for encoding the user’s query terms. Right now we know, that the Search Engines can agree on the way of crawling the websites, but at the same time we know, that they use a lot of own “meta-extensions” to the crawling, like Google’s “no-follow” or Yahoo’s “no-content” for example. While user’s query terms are really far away from being interpreted by the sites (at the moment of writing it seems that only Yahoo pays attention to the meta content tag), the search engines have already done the first step into the direction of a better cooperation with website administrators and into the assuring of a better quality and better search results content.

Interesting, is that recently the governments of Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia announced they would use Sitemaps on their web sites. Of course it is quite a publicity stunt with a support for Google in the first place (creators of the sitemap protocol), but at the same time it is a quite a recognition of the Sitemap protocol. First Yahoo, then Microsoft and Ask.com has recognized it, and now we have some “enterprises” from the public sector coming for its support. Way to go, Jakob, i am looking for your next book =O)

The WaSP has announced that at their annual meeting a few days ago at SXSW, they have decided to create a WaSP Street Team. The aim of the new team is to give ways to get involved with web standards evangelism in the local areas and in the places of work and online.

The information that is published is very few at the moment, basically what the Web Standards Project is doing is encouraging the people to put their names and addresses on the list, which will distribute the information, in some near future. The most important message is that the WaSP Street Teams will help the promotion of web standards in local communities.

I am quite excited about this, and this is a measure i believe that that was needed for quite a long time. Making big topic of the standards will make people talk of them, making a group will help to spread it out. I have to confess, that besides some portuguese names and portuguese sites on the net, that i find, there are just 2 people in real life, that i know capable of maintaining the conversation on the topic of XHTML/CSS standards. It is a very sad statistic, since i know quite a lot developers working in a lot of big portuguese companies. Only by the local teams it will be possible to reach some of the minds, which are still living in a long and forgotten 90s.

I hope there are some Portuguese interested in this project, so there will be a positive result (wider standards adoption) out of this idea.

Factuplus 2006 is the worst piece of software i have ever seen in my entire life. Really. Seeing a popular in Portugal program in a year 2007 which has a look and feel of a 1989-1993 program makes you feel – “i want my money back”. Paying 180 euros for such a shameful software makes me feel guilty; next time i will definitely chose a different software.

During Factuplus 2006 installation, you notice, that you cannot switch to any other task in windows, and while windows is meant to be a multi-tasking operating system, it annoys hell out of me, when something is blocking my access to other software. The dialogs that Factuplus 2006 installation is using are from Windows 3.11 and i am not kidding and not exaggerating it, thanks God that software itself is using Windows 95 dialogs. =O) The activation procedure is annoying as well as one has to register twice on the Sage’s site, besides that when you call them for the first time to get the activation code, they redirect you to the register procedure, asking to call them about 30 minutes later after that. (more…)

Almost one year later, after the original Portwatch research, i have decided to do one more research, this time dedicated to the standard compliance (and not compliance) of the portuguese banks.
I am expecting to be able to conduct a new research dedicated to the principal portuguese municipalities later this year, just to be able to compare if there is any progress, but i also wish to compare other “industries” and governmental authorities, so i am going to include them all into Portwatch or whatever name this project will shape into in the nearest future.

I have visited websites of 9 biggest portuguese banks, to compare their standards compliance, to test their sites in 3 major browsers – Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera, and to know if there is at least one bank who cares about their customers with special needs. The banks i have chosen to test are: Banif, Barclays, BES, BPI, CGD, Deutsche Bank, Millenium BCP, Montepio and Totta, as the others only make part of these ones, or their impact is really insignificant for 99% of the portuguese bank customers.
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Portuguese government has presented 95 measures (or probably more suggestions or ideas) to improve accessibility, education, qualification, employment and habitation of the people with special necessities in Portugal. I was expecting such measures for quite some years, while living in Portugal, because having some very close friends between such people, i know from the direct impressions, about difficulties in such primitive things like getting out of the house.

Some of the people from the government saying that there are a lot of things, already in progress etc, but i have to say, that those people are living in their own world, having absolutely nothing to do with the reality. No access, no ramps, no chances to enter alone in 98% of the trains and about 70% of the metro stations – this is the current situation of the Portuguese accessibility.

A secretary of rehabilitation, Idália Moniz, is talking about 30% improvement in social conditions, like creation of the special houses for the people with deficiencies, but she most probably has never even read about statistics, which refers the number of about 160.000 people with motor disabilities – imagine biggest portuguese football stadium X 3 full of the people, and there is no way to improve their quality of life by constructing 2 or 3 buildings with each having something like 50 flats. She has referred that the government is planning to build around 20 buildings in the next 3 years, in which they are hoping to help about 800 people, but being realistic i would be more then happy even if it would be just a half.

In any case, it is a very important step which was really missing in Portugal and i hope that in the next years thing will finally get better. =O)