Larry,

I have just written (and deleted) a long, scathing reply to your post. I
felt it was highly inappropriate of you to imply my site data was somehow
flawed or inaccurate and then present your own flawed and inaccurate data to
back up that claim. I also went on about how I've done some extensive
studies and surveys on many of the sites I work on to determine just what
would be the best path for technology-use-level -- in other words, I *KNOW*
the general preferences of those who visit my sites. I also went and quoted
and explained some of the things I originally stated to Nathan that your
email implied that you had missed.

But as I said, I deleted it, because it was degenerating into a flame, which
I am opposed to, and try very hard not to cause or become involved in (I
don't always succeed, though). I would suggest that you re-read my post, not
just skim it. You will find that I made a number of disclaimers in it, both
before and after presenting the abridged webstat data. Here's just a sample:

"This is subjective data and is not necessarily accurate net-wide..."
"...while N4 is not all that far up there ... when you look at the actual
sessions for N4, you really can't just ignore them, either."
"...it's safe to say that a targeted site could easily do away with Netscape
4. But you'd still be alienating SOME users."
"If the degradation is severe, I'd consider a dual-site option..."

If that's not enough disclaimers to say that the data is not accurate for
all sites and that Netscape 4 should not be discounted yet, I don't know
what is.

You commented, "I don't know anything about your sites' content..."

That's true. I didn't identify the sites themselves, because that data, I
felt, was moot. Apparently not in your opinion, so here's the kind of sites
they are:
SITE ONE: New-to-the-web travel agency page
SITE TWO: Nationwide fraternity/membership-only site
SITE THREE: Local custom-manufactured clothing site
SITE FOUR: Internet magazine
SITE FIVE: Adult content (photos)
SITE SIX: Personal homepage
SITE SEVEN: Business webpages

As you can see, fairly eclectic. They don't really fit into one kind of
genre or class. So it's not just one type of visitor going to these sites,
either. It's all types. You added to your comment, "but you might stop to
think about reasons why you're getting so few Netscape hits." Well, as I
said above, my original email to you (that was deleted) explained all this,
but also got mouthy, as your comment actually came across fairly rude,
implying I have no clue about my visitors. As I stated above, I know my
visitors quite well. I also post on EVERY site a method to contact me if
there's any problems, so I can fix them. When visitors contact me (and they
do), I try to fix the problem they experienced in whatever browser they
used.

Do you really want to figure out what a good AVERAGE sitestat might be?
Here's what I suggest: submit a summary of the logs of a handful of your
sites, as eclectic a mix as possible, showing all the browsers and versions
and percentages. I will add to that the summary of the logs of the sites I
sampled for Nathan. Others on this list can also submit summaries of some of
their sites. In a few days, this data can be culled and merged to come up
with a much closer average for "typical" browser usage than my seven or your
one site alone will. Then, once and for all, we can all (hopefully) just put
all this rediculous bickering about which browser is better aside and use
the averages of the browsing public to guide how we'll build and modify our
sites.

You might prefer Netscape 4.x on a Mac, while I prefer MSIE 6 PPR on
Windows2000. That right there will tend to skew us in our design to support
our browser of preference over other browsers. Let's just find out what the
general public has to say. With hundreds of millions of websurfers out there
around the world, the data collected from eight websites is insufficient to
build a basis for averages. Who knows? Maybe the data my sites show is
because almost all my visitors are from the US, whereas it might be
different if they were almost all from South Africa. Here's our chance to
find out, in an honest, open method...

Kehvan

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