I recently took delivery of a Meraki access point. I didn’t really need another access point but the hype eventually got to me. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what it would do. All I knew, was what I had been told…

• The Meraki would bring free or cheap internet
• Meraki will wrestle the lucrative internet subscriber market from the grip of Telstra and Optus
• Meraki would allow users to route around what isn’t working and arrive somewhere better than it was before

If all this talk doesn’t yet have you convinced, then maybe my experience with a Meraki will. (more…)

It has been hard in the past to publish video on the web reliably, for a number of reasons, low bandwidth being the larger of the limiting factors. But there are many more users with fat bandwidth and big monthly quotas then there were 12 months ago. In November 2006 Australia’s largest internet provider Telstra, launched ADSL2+ and uncapped its ADSL1 services. Accordingly, the appetite for broadband has grown. Various reliable sources report :

• internet usage increased by 4% in 2007 to 74% of the population (ITU)
• there are approximately 5 million broadband connections australia-wide (OECD)

(more…)

It’s now been 12 months since the release (via automatic updates) of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). 79% of visitors to our client sites are using an Internet Explorer browser (a reduction of 3% from when last we posted stats 9 months ago). Firefox achieved a 14% penetration.

Browser penetration breakdown across Fatpublisher client sites:

Internet explorer version 6 versus 7 :

And for the screen resolution junkies:

Until next time… happy designing, happy programming.

Google bought Urchin Web Analytics in 2005. Since then we have seen some major changes to the original Urchin software. Earlier this year Google upgraded their analytics offering significantly. Google Analytics is now a very popular and powerful website reporting tool.

Fatpublisher have up until now offered a customised version of webalizer to all clients. We now simply recommend and configure Google Analytics accounts. Webalizer continues to be available however we have found that as soon as our clients begin using Google Analytics they very rarely refer to webalizer anymore. (more…)

We are always looking for ways of accurately reporting the success of websites in the search engines. Screen scraping the search engine result pages is not always an option since they often lock you out after a certain number of queries. We devoted some time to developing a web based log analyser that charts the number of referrals from the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and Live Search.

Check it out, feedback welcome : siterake

Ever heard a radio announcer read out a website address “double u double u double u dot sydney restaurants dot com dot au”. It really takes a very long time to say ‘www’. So why do it? Why do we put a ‘www’ on the front of a domain name if everyone has it? The time has come for web hosts and site owners to drop the ‘www’. By all means, still allow people to reach your site using ‘www’ but make the necessary changes to your server settings (.htaccess etc) and redirect the ‘www’ to the blank host record equivalent.

Read more about how to do it here:

We have recently began submitting forms via AJAX rather than the traditional full page load approach. It is working very well. The challenge now though is to make this approach as accessible as possible and set focus correctly when the returned markup is rendered. So much to consider! But rather than discuss accessibility here, I thought I’d offer for general consumption some AJAX activity loaders for use in your next wizz bang application. (more…)

It’s been 3 months since the release (via automatic updates) of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). 21% of visitors to our client sites are using the new browser version.

It is a slow take up in my mind. Clearly lots of people have automatic updates turned off. The recent release of vista will improve the take up. If you are a developer, be prepared to program for both IE6 and IE7 for some time to come.

General penetration statistics:

• IE6 61%
• IE7 21%
• Firefox 11%
• Safari 4%
• Netscape 1%
• Opera 0.5%
• Other (Mozilla, Camino etc) 1.5%

Note: these statistics are based on website traffic to several highly trafficked commercial / retail sites (more…)

The majority of search engines today handle singular and plural keywords differently. Were they to treat singular and keywords the same, the search results would be the same, evidently they are not.

Try it now by searching the major search engines for both ‘website designers sydney’ and ‘website designer sydney’, the results are often remarkably different:

Live : website designers sydney »
Live : website designer sydney »
Google : website designers sydney »
Google : website designer sydney »
Yahoo : website designers sydney »
Yahoo : website designer sydney »

It is important therefore, to optimise a website for both singular and plural keywords and in proportion to their respective usages. If most people would search using a plural than more effort should be directed towards optimising the website for the search phrase involving the plural keyword.

Web designers and developers have an increasing obligation to design and develop sites that are accessible. Almost 1 in 5 Australian’s have a disability. It therefore makes good business and marketing sense to ensure your websites are accessible. And then there is the law! Website owners are obliged to comply with the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Large companies are currently being sued in the United States for having sites that are inaccessible. Current companies facing lawsuits include America Online, Target, Southwest airlines. In 1999, the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) were sued by Bruce Maquire, a blind user.

I encourage all web designers, developers and website owners to read the World Wide Web Access: Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes provided by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

So with accessibility in mind, lets talk about Pop-ups!

Pop-up windows have been a big topic of conversation over the years, and it continues to this day. The consensus however among usability and accessibility experts is that pop-ups are not user friendly and they are inaccessible. I agree, for the following reasons: (more…)