Statistics lie, but…

…when I looked at the statistics of my site, and how the browser stats have changed during the four months I’ve been with my current host, I’m a bit happy. True – it’s only telling anything about the visits to my own site, but that’s the one important to me. I also could have taken into account various sources that may skew the numbers this way or that way – but I don’t bother too much about that either. I’m not looking at getting the exact numbers as much as how the numbers change – and that’s what I’m looking at here:

September October November December
Internet Explorer 80,5% 81,9% 76,4% 74,2%
Opera 2,2% 3,0% 4,9% 8,3%
FireFox – 2,6% 6,0% 5,6%
Mozilla 6,6% 4,1% 1,5% 3,0%
Safari 1,4% 1,4% 1,9% 1,9%
Netscape 2,1% 2,1% 3,6% 1,3%
Konqueror 0,8% 0,3% 0,4% 0,2%

It’s fun to see Opera and Firefox making such strides forward, and Internet Explorer losing terrain – especially since my site isn’t one which should be of a kind that attracts people interested in using standard adhering browsers over IE users. So far in January Opera and FireFox is both between 6 and 7% – it will be fun to see how this will develop in the time ahead. Hopefully, more and more will use modern browsers and drop the dinosaur.

Reciprocal linking – a daunting task?

You link to me, I link to you – that will bring us both more traffic. An easy thing to do, and it works – if it’s done right.

To just accept any request for a reciprocal link, no matter from where, is not the way to go. You need to keep the links to other sites in your own niche, so that they will not only provide your visitors with interesting places to visit, but also make your own site a valuable place to visit. The bonus is of course the traffic from the other sites, and that search engines will look at your site as more relevant – but keeping your links to relevant sites may also open for a closer cooperation with those sites.

All this is material for many articles, but the task of finding good sites with content related to your own, and then take contact with the owners and convince them to make a reciprocal link (and that you’re not just one of the spammers who tries this aimlessly) is a daunting task. Or is it? I just found a site – Links-For-You.com – that claims to make this task much easier, by arrange contact between serious participants interested in reciprocal linking within their own niches. It may work – I’ll have to look closer into it myself, too. 😉

DHTML Lemmings

Some may suspect I’m a bit nostalgic when it comes to old, classic games, on the grounds of what I wrote about Pirates! not long ago. And that may be true. Another game I have enjoyed in previous times, is Lemmings – these cute, suicidal creatures which you have to guide safely home. This game is now recreated – if not all levels and not completely – with the use of Javascript.

So, wether you’re a nostalgic or have no idea what I’m talking about, go have a try yourself at DHTML Lemmings.

No smoking?

As Norway got its smoking ban in places where people work – like restaurants, pubs and so on – there were an outcry from unhappy smokers, who had to go outside to smoke. Claims were heard that in no other country such strict laws were found. Well – at least not nationwide.

That claim can now definitely not be made anymore. The kingdom of Bhutan now has a ban on sale of tobacco products – with severe penalties for those who don’t comply.

Who’s next? Maybe smokers should be happy they’re allowed to smoke at all?

Switching from IE

Why are people switching from IE, Arve Bersvendsen asks in his blog. Personally I use the alternatives because all of them offer more and just plainly are much better. But I recently asked a similar question on an online forum (norwegian, for women): Which browser have they tried, and what are the experiences?

I have more or less made the claim that anyone who tries an alternative – really tries, and not give up afte the first button which looks different – will never go back to IE. So far it looks like it holds true.

OK, it’s not always easy to get the interesting details in the answers, but with one exception everyone was happy, whether they used, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera or Safari. And that exception didn’t state for how long she had tried. (But she’s under constant pressure on the home front to use Linux ;-))

The reasons mentioned includes the tabbed browsing (or really, an effect of this: Only one entry on the start bar when browing many pages,) faster, more stable, that you continued where you left off, and how much you can configure and change the look of the browser (Opera) to suit yourself.

There were a couple of comments I enjoyed particulary; one, because she stated Opera even had the functions she didn’t know she missed – and probably even more. The second, because a couple of weeks ago I convinced one who was a bit “afraid” to install a new browser (“Isn’t it difficult?”) to try Opera. I guided her through the process (“Download, double click to install, answer ‘yes’ to set it as your default browser, and start using. It’s that simple.”) and now she’s quite happy with it. She will not go back to IE.

So, while there haven’t been much details as for why they’re happy with the alternatives, it’s been clear that IE is abandoned.

Flashify it.

Is there a word called flashify? If not, maybe there should be…

I’m thinking of the process of turning a web page og web site in (X)HTML/XML into a site using Macromedia Flash. And the reason I’m thinking of that process, is the possibility of doing it myself. OK, not completely; just some elements – flashify light, maybe.

The part I’m pondering if I’ll change is one important part of this site: The “moon base menu” on the main page, which is the entrance point to the different areas. It needs to be updated in some way no matter what.

I know, there is the question of accessibility, too – and I won’t sacrifice that aspect on the altar of fanciness. There are three possibilities as I see it now:

  1. Directing flash-users to a page with the flash menu, and the rest getting a text or javascript menu as it is now.
  2. Include the flash menu on the page for the flash users, and text/javascript for the rest
  3. Just have a fancy flash menu – and a simpler text-menu in addition. Styled with CSS, of course.

Just sending people a flash-menu just because they’re able to see it, doesn’t mean they prefer it. So there must be a choice – and to avoid having them choose every time, utilise a cookie. (Hopefully they’ll accept cookies.) I’ll probably go for the second method – including the menu in the page – should I go for that solution and offer two different versions.

But I’m also tempted to just offer both flash and text. Doing it right, it doesn’t need to get an unneccessary double-up feeling. While the text links would offer a quick wayto just get where they want, flash could offer descriptions and details of the various choices – and maybe even extra bits, like flash animations. Or something.

To be honest, at the moment the latter option seems most attractive to me. I’ll have to give this some thought.