Browser trends into 2010

I noticed a post by Nick at UCL a couple of weeks ago about browser trends in 2009 on their site and it prompted me to have a look at our numbers too.

As Nick noted in his post, these trends are not really a surprise but they're still interesting and it's worth keeping an eye on the big picture.

Here are our trends over the past year:

IE6





IE7





IE8


Chrome


Safari


Mac


iPhone


(Caveat: we've been rolling Google Analytics out more widely over the past year so a small amount of upward trending is likely down to us covering more pages over time)


Update:
Someone pointed out that I forgot to include Firefox, so here's just one more:


Update 2!:
Arthur noted that comparisons would be more useful, so I pulled some of the data into Excel and came up with this (click through to see a bigger, almost-legible version):

Blogger Template Designer

Google recently announced the addition of some brand new template design functionality to Blogger (the tool that powers this blog). The new template designer is accessed via Blogger in Draft, which lets you see how any changes will affect your blog before you make them live.

I gave it a go this afternoon and was really impressed with the results. There are 15 templates available (with more planned for the future), which all look good straight out of the box. You can put your own stamp on them by making changes to the layout, fonts, colours, background image, etc, all of which are easily changed. The background images available are very impressive in themselves, with a choice of hundreds of high-quality photos, textures and patterns to play with. Each template comes with suggested colour palettes too, which makes it easy for non-designers to produce something that looks great.

What you're seeing now (view the blog here if you're using an RSS reader) is the result of just a few minutes of experimentation.

The video below gives a quick tour of what you can do with the new template designer:

Speed up your image downloads with Smush.it

Smush.it is a handy and incredibly simple tool for making sure that the images on your site are as small as can be, and hence will download as quickly as possible for visitors to your site

To use it, all you need to do is upload a bunch of files. Smush.it will compress your images, tell you how much smaller your new files are, and give you a zip file to download. There aren't any configuration settings to think about, making the whole process as pain-free as possible.

The savings will vary depending on how the images were saved in the first place, but I've seen reductions of up to 50% with the files I've tried out so far.

The compression is lossless too, meaning that there is no reduction in quality in the images.

Yahoo! Smush.it (via UCL Web Services Blog)

Finding Ada 2010: Helen Petrie

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

To celebrate we thought we could share the work of women in Computer Science right here at the University of York.

Helen Petrie is a Professor of Human Computer Interaction. Her work focuses on the design and evaluation of technology for the elderly and for people with disabilities. She is a leading figure in the design of accessible websites and the author of the Disability Rights Commission's report, The Web, Access and Inclusion for Disabled People.

You can find out more on Helen's profile page.

Site Manager spring cleaning

Site Manager's admin screens are looking a lot tidier after getting rid of 28 templates that we didn't need!

Higher Education websites - made to stick?

What is it about some ideas that make them catch on and stick in our memories, while others are instantly forgettable? Why do we have no trouble recalling the details of urban myths but often have difficultly remembering vital facts that could benefit our health?

In their book "Made to Stick", authors Chip & Dan Heath argue that while there's no secret formula for coming up with a good idea in the first place, it will have a much better chance of sticking if it is:

• simple
• unexpected
• concrete
• credible
• uses emotion
• tells a story.

You may have spotted that spells out SUCCESs (which they openly admit is about as clichéd an acronym as you'll ever get - they could have used some different words and changed the order but CCUCES wouldn't have been quite as memorable).

What's that got to do with the web?

Although it's not a book specifically written about the web, the techniques that it describe can be applied to any form of communications, whether that's giving a presentation, contributing to a discussion, or indeed, writing web content.

The issue of simplicity was the one that resonated the most initially - as anyone who has attended a Writing for the Web session will have heard - simplicity is a vital part of producing web content that is easy for your readers to take in. So that means avoiding jargon, discarding any content that isn't essential to your core message, providing one clear call to action instead of seven vague ones, putting the most important information up front, etc.

Reading this book happened to coincide with some work we've been doing that has involved us looking at some of our competitor's websites. Amongst the more memorable ones I started to notice more aspects of the stickiness model at work:

Unexpected

I definitely didn't expect to see exploding buildings (Boston) or claims of the benefits of teenage pregnancy (LSE) on the homepage of a university website. They definitely caught my attention and encouraged me to read more.

Concrete

There's a greater chance of ideas being memorable if they contain concrete things that people can relate to, like names, actions, faces and places.

One challenge that universities face is making academic research understandable and appealing to a general audience. Many do this well by showing how it relates to real world problems that people can identify with, rather than using more abstract language that doesn't carry as much meaning amongst a general audience.

Take this example from Carnegie Mellon, which uses the act of making a cup of coffee as a "hook" that helps you to understand research about the world's water resources.

Credible

Most universities can claim to be the best at something or other, but it sounds a lot more believable when it's coming from someone else. Realistic quotes from staff and students can often be a lot more believable than anything that comes directly from the institution.

Using emotion

Sites such as Imperial are very good at using emotive language that helps you to imagine what it would be like to come to study there - "be inspired" and "an Imperial degree is something special" rather than just presenting a list of facts.

So, plenty of food for thought. I'll definitely be keeping my eyes out for more ways to make web content that "sticks".