Why?

Why is this project being conducted? Why should web designers want to participate? Why should Internet surfers be excited about this research? This page addresses all of these questions.
   

Why conduct this research?

This project aims at making web design eaiser and web surfing more enjoyable. By discovering the most popular configurations used to access a website, webmasters can save resources by focusing their design time on the most popular configurations, and visitors can enjoy websites that function well on their computer systems.

Additionally, this project will be submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for an Honors Diploma at Murray State University. It will also benefit the undergraduate researcher by providing additional hands-on experience in JavaScript, mySQL, and PHP programming.

Expected Results

The results of this project will include information on several configuration variables, including operation system, browser, plug-ins, and user settings. It is expected that Microsoft Internet Explorer running in Windows XP will be the most popular configuration. Other studies have found that Internet Explorer is consistently the most popular browser ("Browser Statistics", 2005). But this research project will include additional variables that have not yet been studied. It is estimated that the majority of users will also have Macromedia Flash, cookies, and JavaScript enabled.

The interesting results will be the browser versions used and the usage and versions of other technologies such as QuickTime, Real Player, and Windows Media Player.

Another primary goal of this research will be to determine if the primary configurations vary enough between websites to warrant individual site testing. If so, each site should test their visitors independently in order to accommodate the most popular configurations for their site. It is expected that some variables will remain relatively constant across websites, while others will demonstrate a higher variance.

Results Use

As stated in the What? section, results should help web developers make several decisions:

 
 
    1. What end-user configurations should their website accommodate with workarounds?
       
    2. Should each webmaster analyze his or her own site's traffic, or should they rely on aggregate statistics?
       
    3. What plug-ins and user settings are the most widely available to visitors to their website?
  
 

The answers to these questions should make web development easier by allowing webmasters to concentrate on the specific needs of their visitors; furthermore, webmasters might discover that most their users have the ability to accept more advanced technologies than they are currently using.
  Design by MiLO Publishing - 2006