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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>From: "Andreas Kyriacou" <</FONT><A
href="mailto:andreas@kyriacou.ch"><FONT face=Arial
size=2>andreas@kyriacou.ch</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2>><BR>> Andrew
Cunningham wrote:<BR>><BR>> > as an exercise i used a javascript
routine to detect if the browser was<BR>> > netscape<BR>> > 4 or IE
and insert in netscapes case a link to a dynamic font, and in<BR>> > IE's
case<BR>> > some CSS which identified an embeded open type font
source.<BR>><BR>> Just out of interest: What do you do if you detect
another browser?<BR>> Or if a browser like Opera masks itself as NS or IE but
still behaves<BR>> differently?<BR><BR>During the month of August 2001, I had
1,132,345 different requests, using<BR>2,558 different browsers, hit my web
servers. (Note that these are ~my~ web<BR>servers, not the web servers at
tyrell.com, my employer.) The browser count<BR>is based on unique User Agent
strings.<BR><BR>A User Agent string for an Opera browser can look like
this:<BR> Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98) Opera
5.12 [en]<BR>which will be detected as MSIE 5.0 by almost every JavaScript
check I've<BR>ever seen.<BR><BR>Table 1, below, is a heavily edited list of
visiting browsers, sorted by the<BR>number of requests. Table 2, below, is a
list of visitor's operating<BR>systems, sorted by the number of requests. (A
monospace font makes the<BR>numbers line up nicely.)<BR><BR>Of course, your
mileage may vary. In fact I'm sure it will -- I have a lot<BR>of software
development information which would account for the higher than<BR>average
number of visitors from the Linux camp and the lower than average<BR>number from
the Macintosh camp.<BR><BR>As you can see MSIE (62.25%) and Netscape (27.52%)
are by far the most<BR>widely used browsers (89.77%) visiting my servers. While
I do get visitors<BR>using Opera (2.16%), I suspect that they are more computer
savvy than the<BR>average user. I also noticed people using Lynx (0.07%), which
last time I<BR>used it on a VAX in the early 1990s, was text-only.<BR><BR>I try
to design my web sites to be as browser-independent as possible.<BR>However,
when I have to make a browser-dependent decision, I usually go for<BR>the MSIE
5+ and Netscape 4.7+ crowds. I use CSS but I haven't used dynamic<BR>fonts. Most
of my decision making is done on the server using PHP (Linux) or<BR>ASP
(NT).<BR><BR>I also suspect that an overwhelming majority of people wanting to
visit an<BR>endangered/minority language site will be using either Windows or
Macintosh<BR>OS and the default browser that comes installed with the OS,
usually MSIE.<BR><BR>On the other hand, if endangered/minority language people
are using a<BR>browser customized for their language, it will probably be an
open source<BR>browser which would eliminate all MSIE browsers and Netscape
browsers before<BR>6.0.<BR><BR>What would really be nice to have is some way to
find all computer-related<BR>information for a given language on a single web
site. The reason that I<BR>think this is unlikely to happen is that everyone
(myself included) thinks<BR>~their~ way of doing things is the best way, so we
have the situation where<BR>we are trying to duplicate information across many
different sites, but no<BR>way to keep the sites in sync with one another.
Something like running rsync<BR>in a daily cron job helps, but you have to write
every page to a lowest<BR>common denominator.<BR><BR>Texts could be shared by
putting the texts in a file that is intended to be<BR>included with SSI, but
that would also require everything in a given<BR>language to use the same
character mapping. Unicode would help for those<BR>languages that can be
entirely written using the Unicode character set,<BR>which I assume is most
languages. Unicode has a private use block<BR>reserved -- great for characters
not included in Unicode -- but everyone<BR>would have to standardize on a common
character mapping scheme for the<BR>private use area, and that would mean some
kind of standard being in place<BR>and by definition, it would no longer be a
private use block.<BR><BR>Naturally I am willing to offer free server space to
anyone and everyone<BR>working on endangered/minority languages, but I suspect
that others are<BR>willing to do the same, e.g., universities, organizations
like SIL, etc.<BR>Note that I can only offer space on ~my~ servers, I can't
speak for Tyrell<BR>Software, my employer.<BR><BR>I know that this has turned
into rambling, but these are a few of my<BR>thoughts on things.<BR><BR>Chuck
Coker</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Orange, California, United States</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><BR><BR><FONT face=Courier>Table 1:
Browsers<BR><BR> reqs: %reqs: browser<BR>------: ------:
-------<BR>704247: 62.25%: MSIE<BR>630050: 55.69%:
MSIE/5<BR>62672: 5.54%: MSIE/6<BR> 11451:
1.01%: MSIE/4<BR> 74: 0.01%:
MSIE/3<BR>311354: 27.52%: Netscape<BR>207171: 18.31%:
Mozilla/4<BR>101335: 8.96%: Mozilla/5<BR> 1051:
0.09%: Mozilla/3<BR>
55: :
Mozilla/6<BR> 56890: 5.03%: Netscape
(compatible)<BR> 24455: 2.16%: Opera<BR> 24364:
2.15%: Opera/5<BR> 58: 0.01%:
Opera/3<BR> 33:
: Opera/4<BR> 5264: 0.47%: Teleport Pro<BR>
3607: 0.32%: WebZIP<BR> 3560: 0.31%: Offline
Explorer<BR> 2080: 0.18%: Scooter-W3-1.0<BR> 738:
0.07%: Lynx<BR> 630: 0.06%: MSProxy<BR> 353:
0.03%: Dual Proxy<BR> 279: 0.02%: contype<BR>
237: 0.02%: Java1.3.1<BR> 229: 0.02%:
libWeb<BR> 224: 0.02%: DA 5.0<BR> 216:
0.02%: EbiNess 0.1a<BR> 213: 0.02%:
Windows-Media-Player<BR> 198: 0.02%: iCab<BR>
152: 0.01%: RMA<BR> 141: 0.01%: DA 4.0<BR>
112: 0.01%: Konqueror<BR> 110: 0.01%:
SpaceBison<BR> 95: 0.01%: FlashGet<BR>
91: 0.01%: GetRight<BR> 76: 0.01%:
WebTV<BR> 65: 0.01%: NSPlayer<BR>
58: 0.01%: EmailSiphon<BR><BR>Table 2: Operating Systems<BR><BR>
reqs: %reqs: OS<BR>------: ------: --<BR>788770: 69.72%:
Windows<BR>390801: 34.54%: Windows 2000<BR>180740:
15.98%: Windows 98<BR>128786: 11.38%: Windows
NT<BR> 35835: 3.17%: Windows Me<BR> 30160:
2.67%: Unknown Windows<BR> 22410: 1.98%:
Windows 95<BR> 23:
: Windows 32-bit<BR>
15: : Windows 3.1<BR>266324:
23.54%: Unix<BR>209410: 18.51%: Linux<BR> 31932:
2.82%: Other Unix<BR> 14352: 1.27%:
SunOS<BR> 7828: 0.69%: BSD<BR> 1906:
0.17%: IRIX<BR> 436: 0.04%:
OSF1<BR> 358: 0.03%: HP-UX<BR>
102: 0.01%: AIX<BR> 31283: 2.77%: OS
unknown<BR> 27507: 2.43%: Macintosh<BR> 26727:
2.36%: Macintosh PowerPC<BR> 780:
0.07%: Macintosh 68k<BR> 106: 0.01%:
BeOS<BR> 81: 0.01%: OS/2<BR> 76:
0.01%: WebTV<BR> 54: :
Atari<BR> 48: :
OpenVMS<BR> 45: :
Amiga<BR></FONT><BR>----------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>Chuck
Coker <</FONT><A href="mailto:chuckc@tyrell.com"><FONT face=Arial
size=2>chuckc@tyrell.com</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2>><BR>Software
Developer, Tyrell Software Corporation<BR>23151 Verdugo Drive, Suite
204<BR>Laguna Hills, California 92653 United States<BR>+1 949 458 1911 ext.
3<BR>----------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>Extreme
sports ... offer "some kind of physical analog to the thrill<BR>of installing
Linux or other open-source operating systems."<BR>-- Mikki Halpin, in The
Geek Handbook</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>