Websites must meet the customer’s requirements in terms of appearance and interest, ease of navigation and speed of response in the most economical manner. The approach to website development needs to be both progressive and pragmatic in the use of technology. The rate of advancement in the technology is such that the best combination of the latest proven technologies must always be applied to each new website in the most appropriate manner.
Although the main and most obvious financial outlay may be at the development stage, the total cost of a website covers its entire lifecycle, which includes: -
- The initial design and development cost
- The ongoing operational, maintenance and support cost
- The cost of updating the website to keep its content fresh and up to date
- Each new website is optimised for most of its visitors by exploiting the current state of the art in technology, while still meeting the needs of all of its visitors.
The use of a particular technology is also conditioned by the type of website and its target market. These range from those with a very high technical and business content through to those that need to convey a particular message with maximum visual impact.
Corporate Upgrade Policies
Those websites that are targeted at employees within large companies need to take account of the upgrade policies of most IT departments.
Upgrades are normally introduced on an enterprise wide basis and several software packages tend to be upgraded concurrently rather than individually. These upgrades also tend to be major exercises, so they do not occur very often. The corporate preference is also towards a low risk approach, which implies the use of well established versions of any software.
Taken together, these factors normally result in large companies continuing to use software that is several versions behind the current standard. This is reflected in the proportion of visitors still using Windows 2000, which is currently 4%.**
The Flash plug-in is a prime example of this. Although the visitor’s browser automatically requests an upgrade to the version being used for the Flash movie, corporate employees are normally barred from upgrading individually. Given the recent rate of advanced in the versions of Flash movies, it is advisable to design for versions that are one or even two years old.
Browsers
Microsoft Internet Explorer is used by typically 85% to 95% of all visitors with FireFox and Safari accounting for most of the rest.
All of the current versions of these browsers have to be accommodated. For example, only a few weeks after its release, more than 15% of visitors were using Internet Explorer version 7.0, yet half of the population are still using version 6.0.**
All of our websites are designed to operate correctly with all of the three main types of browser, and with several versions of each of them.
No specific attempt is made to cater for the remaining 1% to 2% of visitors with other types of browser, although the likelihood is that the website will function correctly with most of them.
Operating Systems
Over 96% of all visitors have Windows Vista, XP or 2000 as their operating system, with Apple MACs accounting for a further 3% and older versions of Windows for the rest.**
Although no precise statistics are available, anecdotal evidence indicates that Apple MACs are more likely to be used in the more creative sectors and purchased by more affluent people.
All of our websites are designed to run on the two main Windows operating systems and on Apple MACs.
The type of operating system also has processor performance implications. Although there is no direct measure of processor types being used by website visitors, it is reasonable to assume that those using Windows Vista XP or 2000 have Pentium IV processors or better.
This higher user processor performance enables much greater use to be made of JavaScript running on the visitor’s computer. This reduces the number of server requests, and hence the amount of data that needs to be downloaded, but more importantly enables much more direct visitor interaction with the website.
Screen Resolutions
The optimum design screen resolution is 1024 pixels x 768 pixels. 53% of all website visitors have screens of this resolution and a further 40% have screens with even higher resolutions.**
All of our websites are designed for this screen resolution, because it gives the best compromise between the space available on the page and the need for any vertical or horizontal scrolling.
In some cases, the pages of the website are allowed to expand to the full width and height of the screen, but others are restricted to being 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high. In most case, the pages are designed to fit within a 1024 pixel wide screen, which removes the need for any horizontal scroll bars. The pages can also be designed to fit within a 768 pixel high screen, which removes the need for any vertical scroll bars. These choices depend on the style and content of each individual website.
Although the websites are designed for screen resolutions of 1024 pixels x 768 pixels or higher, the needs of visitors with lower screen resolutions are still catered for by enabling the vertical and horizontal scroll bars.
Despite the preponderance of much higher resolution monitors, the likelihood of the optimum being moved up to the next level is unlikely to occur for some time. The next commonly used screen resolution is 1280 pixels x 1024 pixels, which still only accounts for less than 20% of all visitors.
Connection Speed
High speed ADSL connections are used by 96% of the website visitors with most of the remainder still using dial-up connections.
The use of ADSL has significantly reduced the importance of the download time in recent years. This has allowed much more freedom in the design of websites. Care still has to be taken to avoid the use of excessively large images and other large files.
All of our websites are designed primarily for ADSL use, because most dial-up users accept that the limitation is with their connection and not with the website. The most important aspect in which the lower speed of dial up connections still has to be taken into account is in the handling of streamed videos.
JavaScript
JavaScript is enabled on the browsers of 99.5% of all visitors, so it can be exploited as required to provide maximum visitor interaction with the website and to minimise the number of server requests and hence the amount of data that needs to be downloaded.
Flash (Shock Wave)
Flash is enabled on the browsers of 98% of all visitors, but the actual versions of Flash used by visitors if of more importance, as shown in the following table: -
Version % Use
9 78
8 11
7 6
6 3
These statistics have changed significantly since version 8 was introduced earlier in 2006. A major change was made between version 7 and version 8, which resulted in incompatibilities with the then latest MAC based versions of FireFox and Safari browsers, was corrected in version 9.
All versions of Flash are backwards compatible, so if a visitor has version 9 installed on their computer, it can still display Shock Wave files targeted at older versions. We currently target any Flash movies that we generate at version 7, because this caters for almost the entirety of all website visitors.
We only use Flash for animating images, rather than for the navigation of the website, and version 7 is more than capable of providing all of the required features.
HTML versus Flash
HTML and Flash have both been used for websites for many years. Both have their origins in the mid 1990s and both have advanced along relatively complementary paths.
Many website developers are wedded to either one technology or the other. This is reflected in the number of websites that are either virtually 100% Flash or 100% HTML.
The main attribute of the Flash movies is the very dynamic and highly visual presentations can be achieved. This is reflected in its use in websites that are designed primarily to portray an image of a company, products or services. Flash movies can include navigational features, buttons, menus, etc, but their inclusion present an impenetrable barriers to search engines.
Flash movies also tends to be preferred by web developers having a design background, rather than a technical system design / programming background, mainly because it allows them to be more creative and the development tools, such as Macromedia Flash MX, are much more visual in nature.
Flash based websites are relatively difficult and costly to keep up to date, so there use should be avoided for any content that is likely to require any modification. At best, they require separate offline editing and at worst the website has to be modified by the original developer. By contrast, all of the content of a suitably designed HTML websites can be maintained by the customer using an online WYSIWYG editor in the context of each page.
Invariably, the shortcomings of a 100% Flash website result in it being accompanied by a non-Flash version, especially for the corporate sector. As virtually the same effects can be achieved with HTML, in combination with JavaScript, this calls into question the use of Flash. However, many of the special effects that are built-in to Flash require the use of quite complex programs in their JavaScript equivalents.
The main determining factor in favour of HTML is the need for good search engine performance. In this context, the best way of exploiting Flash is to use it solely as a means of animation while using HTML for all of the website navigation.
** These figures were last revised in September 2007. top...