April 28, 2003
NPD new media study for March 2003
Macromedia has just published the March 2003 numbers for Shockwave and Flash plugin penetration. Always useful in pitching and planning projects that employ these technologies, this time around we also have a Flash MX penetration prediction for June and a couple charts covering Flash Player bundling with browser and OS.
But I'm getting ahead of myself—on to the numbers: Flash Player 6 continues to take over the world, coming in at just under 84%. Shockwave for Director 8.5.x holds at 44%, essentially unchanged since last quarter.
Macromedia's published findings from the study again show interesting technographic information for US users, including OS, browser platform, connection type and location, length of experience with the web and age of computer used.
Here's a sampling, compared against the published numbers from last year:
-Top computing platform 2002: Win '98 (39%)
-Top computing platform 2003: WinXP (31.8%)
-Top Win browser 2002: IE 6.x (35%)
-Top Win browser 2003: IE 6.x (40.2%)
-Top Mac browser 2002: IE 5.x (1.6%)
-Top Mac browser 2003: Other (6.5%)
Could "other" be Safari or Camino?! This number is somewhat surprising. I'm a little surprised that the study only asked the participant what browser they were using instead of empirically gathering the data by examining the userAgent.
Perhaps more surprising is that 22.5% of users in this study didn't know what browser they were using. Possibly another example of why it's dangerous to overestimate the end user's familiarity with the tools we take for granted?
-Top Connection method 2002: 56k modem (39.9%)
-Top Connection method 2003: DSL/Cable modem (40.1%)
Another 14.2% reporting using a T1 or faster plus the 2.5% of ISDN users in the study bring the total broadband user numbers to a whopping 56.8% with 56K modem users accounting for 33.2%.
Still yet more useful info:
-Tops in connection location: Home (69.7%), Work (26.6%)
-Tops in experience on the web: 5 or more years (66.7%)
-Tops in age of computer: Older than 2 years (39%)
Note that 1 to 2 year old computers come in at 25.5%
You can check the methodology employed by NPD and an example of their survey is also available for the curious or skeptical.
Macromedia really ought to be commended for publishing this research and I encourage everyone to spend some time looking over the data.
April 25, 2003
DiMX Xtras Updated
Macromedia has released updated versions (Mac/Win) of the Flash Asset, NetLingo, and TextXtra xtras for authoring and automatic update in Shockwave for Director players. Also updated are the Shockwave installers, posted on 4.8.2003.
The Flash Asset update brings feature/bugfix parity to Flash content played back in Director/Shockwave via the latest (6.0r79) codebase, and the NetLingo update fixes problems with netDone() in Shockwave content. These two xtras should be pushed out to all SW 8.5.1 installations over the coming weeks.
The TextXtra fixes an issue with the Euro character in French & German systems. Shockwave developers targeting this audience may elect to have their content automatically download the new textXtra automatically by selecting "Download if needed" checkbox in the Movie Xtras dialog.
The following lists the new Shockwave install type, version as reported by Lingo's version and environment.productBuildVersion along with the installed xtras and their version (a similar listing of the older installs and some commentary on installer differences can be found in the Meet Director MX entry).
*********************************************
Windows Netscape install
*********************************************
--runmode & version:
Plugin 8.5.1 net (Bld: 434) PC
--Installed Xtras(22)
TextXtra.x32: 9.0.1
Text Asset.x32: 8.5.1
Swastrm.x32: 8.5.1
Swadcmpr.x32: 8.5.1
Speech.x32: 9.0
Sound Control.x32: 8.5.1
Shockwave Updater.x32: 8.5.1
Shockwave 3d Asset.x32: 8.5.1
RealMedia Asset.x32: 8.5.1
QT6Asset.x32: 9.0
Netlingo.x32: 8.5.1
Netfile.x32: 8.5.1
Multiusr.x32: 8.5.1
MacroMix.x32: 8.5.1
INetURL.x32: 8.5.1
Havok.x32: 1.2
Font Xtra.x32: 8.5.1
Font Asset.x32: 8.5.1
Flash Asset.x32: 9.0.2
DirectSound.x32: 8.5.1
CBrowser.x32: 8.5.1
Animated GIF Asset.x32: 8.5.1
*********************************************
Windows ActiveX install
*********************************************
--runmode & version:
Plugin 8.5.1 net (Bld: 434) PC
--Installed Xtras(18)
TextXtra.x32: 9.0.1
Text Asset.x32: 8.5.1
Swastrm.x32: 8.5.1
Swadcmpr.x32: 8.5.1
Speech.x32: 9.0
Sound Control.x32: 8.5.1
Shockwave Updater.x32: 8.5.1
Shockwave 3d Asset.x32: 8.5.1
Netlingo.x32: 8.5.1
Netfile.x32: 8.5.1
Multiusr.x32: 8.5.1
MacroMix.x32: 8.5.1
INetURL.x32: 8.5.1
Font Xtra.x32: 8.5.1
Font Asset.x32: 8.5.1
Flash Asset.x32: 9.0.2
DirectSound.x32: 8.5.1
CBrowser.x32: 8.5.1
*********************************************
Mac OS X install
*********************************************
--runmode & version:
Plugin 9.0 net (Bld: 434) Mac
--Installed Xtras(29)
XmlParser PPC Xtra: 9.0
Tiff Import Export: 9.0
TextXtra PPC: 9.0.1
TextAsset PPC: 9.0
Targa Import Export: 9.0
SWA Streaming PPC Xtra: 9.0
SWA Import Export: 9.0
SWA Decompression PPC Xtra: 9.0
Sun AU Import Export: 9.0
Speech: 9.0
Sound Import Export: 9.0
Sound Control: 9.0
Shockwave 3D Asset Xtra: 8.5.1
QuickTime6 Asset: 9.0
PNG Import Export: 9.0
NetLingo PPC Xtra: 9.0
NetFile PPC Xtra: 9.0
Multiusr: 9.0
MPEG 3 Import Export: 9.0
Mix Services: 9.0
LRG Import Export: 9.0
InetUrl PPC Xtra: 9.0
Havok: 1.2
Font Xtra PPC: 9.0
Font Asset PPC: 9.0
Flash Asset PPC: 9.0.2
CBrowser PPC Xtra: 9.0
Animated GIF Asset: 9.0
QuickTime Asset: 8.5.1
*********************************************
Mac OS 9 install
*********************************************
--runmode & version:
Plugin 8.5.1 net (Bld: 434) Mac
--Installed Xtras(20)
TextXtra PPC: 9.0.1
TextAsset PPC: 8.5.1
SWA Streaming PPC Xtra: 8.5.1
SWA Decompression PPC Xtra: 8.5.1
Speech: 9.0
Sound Control: 8.5.1
Shockwave Updater: 8.5.1
Shockwave 3D Asset Xtra: 8.5.1
RealMedia Asset: 8.5.1
QuickTime6 Asset: 9.0
NetLingo PPC Xtra: 8.5.1
NetFile PPC Xtra: 8.5.1
Multiusr: 8.5.1
InetUrl PPC Xtra: 8.5.1
Havok: 1.2
Font Xtra PPC: 8.5.1
Font Asset PPC: 8.5.1
Flash Asset PPC: 9.0.2
CBrowser PPC Xtra: 8.5.1
Animated GIF Asset: 8.5.1
April 15, 2003
Prelude to a Favicon
In my copious free time, I've been working on an entry about creating and implementing site Favicons, including some surprising gotchas I've run into. Someday, I'll polish it up and post.
Till then, check out a table I made charting differences across popular browsers and platforms: View Favicon Support Table.
April 7, 2003
Hanging with the Moz
I've been meaning for some time to write an overview of features present in Mozilla that can help developers debug and analyze sites—Henrik Gemal's beaten me to it with his aptly named and well done article, Using Mozilla in Testing and Debugging Web Sites.
If you are a web developer, do yourself a favor and spend a few minutes looking over Henrik's article. Even if you're a die-hard IE user (you know who you are), after reading his article I'll bet you'll be opening Mozilla for access to the rich toolset it provides for the web developer community.
Henrik's article covers and compares to Win IE the range of simple to complex tools available in Mozilla such as the Javascript Console, Page Info, Cookie Management, colorized source view and the Cache Manager to the Javascript Debugger, DOM Explorer, and useful extensions like the livehttpheaders add-on, which can display your http traffic stream in a view window.
Another simple feature available since Mozilla 1.1 that slipped my notice until reading Henrik's article: View Selection Source (via context-menu) allows you to select and view the html source of dynamically written content—anyone who has used Javascript to write out HTML knows how difficult it can be to debug your rendering, since all you ever see in your source view are the document.writes. It's also handy for hilighting and jumping quickly to a section of a page that's being difficult.
You'll have to stick with the standard Mozilla builds for this last bit of functionality as the latest Netscape builds do not support View Selection Source.
Ran across this by way of Blogzilla. You can guess on what subject this blog focuses. ;)
