Categories
Mozilla Web Development

Tab Impact On Total Time Spent

As everyone in the industry knows, Nielsen/NetRatings no longer relies on page views instead preferring total time spent. This makes sense since ajax applications can have 1 page view, but keep a user for an hour. Not to mention other things like video or Flash. The use of time spent is likely much more accurate. In my mind “time spent” is time actually spent on the site (I’m a literal guy).

This of course raises an interesting question. How do tabs influence this metric? Take the following situation as an example. A user visits a home page, and opens a link in a new tab. Then finds another link and opens it in a new [background] tab. That’s 3 tabs in 1 visit (assume visit to be 30 minutes).

Before tabs, most browser sessions would look like this:
Linear Pathing

There’s now an increasing number that will look like this (gray is a tab not in view):
Tabbed Pathing

If we assume total time on the site is time between the first and last page, we potentially undercount the total time on sites that list information (for example Digg). The total time to make those clicks could be < 10 seconds, but the time spent reading those two page alone might be > 10 minutes. Many tab power-users from what I’ve read around the web over the years essentially use them as a way to bookmark their “to read” list (including myself). It also undercounts sites like Gmail which are ajax based (1 page) but can be used for several minutes.

If we use javascript to “ping” (call back by placing a tracker gif) the analytics service every x seconds to see if the page is still open, we potentially double count since a user can’t be in 3 tabs at once. The clock would be counting 3 seconds for every 1 second the user is actually looking at the page.

This raises the question: are sites that are heavily used by Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE7 site underestimated or overestimated because of the way users browse the site? How do you accurately tell how long a view is when a user can have multiple tabs?

Another example is someone who keeps their webmail open in a tab all afternoon for easy access. They may only check it 1x measuring no more than 1 minute in actual attention. But it’s open for 5 hrs. What is the real time on the page? You can measure my interaction (opening/closing mail). But what if I’m reading an email for an hour (it’s a really complicated one)? How does that compare to just leaving it open in the background?

This is really no different than using new windows, the difference being that most people seem to have found windows to be annoyance, while tabs are a “feature”. The increase in usage and popularity in a time where visit length matters raises an interesting question. How do you measure it?

One assumption is that it’s just a small percentage of the population, which is likely true. The problem with this assumption is that it’s one subject to change as the browserscape matures and users learn about new features. Another assumption is to just account for all time a page is open, even if it’s not visible. The downside I see here is that it’s pretty inaccurate. As a content producer I’d like to know if my content is used, or just loaded on a users computer. If I were an advertiser I’d care even more.

I’m not sure how analytics firms approach this. In a sense it’s similar to the “hotel problem“. Perhaps just something you need to decide upon and live with.

Categories
Apple Web Development

Safari On The iPhone

There is a message on the Surfin’ Safari blog about the new iPhone, but it doesn’t say as much as I had hoped it would. I want to know the following as a developer:

  • How close is Safari on Mac OS X 10.4 to how the iPhone renders? Are they the same version of WebKit or a fork? How can developers test without an actual phone? Is any Mac with Safari a good method? For the Blackberry we have the simulators. How does it differ?
  • What if any plugin support exists? Does it support QuickTime? Flash? Acrobat (or Preview.app)? Can it handle attachments? Can users download third party plugins? Or are they limited to capabilities of the phone as it ships (or through official software updates)?
  • What will the UserAgent be? Will it be the same as desktop Safari?

The phone is touted as pretty much a full browser, and Safari is up to the task. But I wonder how well it handles rich media through plugins. From the Google Maps demo, I think it’s safe to say xmlHttpRequest is supported.

I’d really like to see some documentation on how webmasters can prepare and ensure an optimal experience on this new device. Ideally it would be given in advance so one could ensure the best experience possible.

Categories
Programming Software Web Development

xmlHttpReq.overrideMimeType() in IE7

This is just a little note for anyone doing xmlHttp work. I just encountered this situation this morning. As most web developers know IE7 introduces support for the native scriptable XMLHttpRequest object. The big advantage here is that ActiveX is no longer necessary to use ajax applications on IE. One thing I did note is that there is a slight difference in their support for the XMLHttpRequest object. Take the following code:

// Mozilla/Safari/IE7+
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
    xmlHttpReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xmlHttpReq.overrideMimeType(‘text/xml’);
}
// IE6-
else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
    xmlHttpReq = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xmlHttpReq.open(‘POST’, strURL, true);

That seems to break for me on IE7. A little experimentation shows that it doesn’t support the overrideMimeType() method. A simple fix for this is to simply check before invoking it as follows:

// Mozilla/Safari/IE7+
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
    xmlHttpReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
    if(xmlHttpReq.overrideMimeType){       
        xmlHttpReq.overrideMimeType(‘text/xml’);
    }
}
// IE6-
else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
    xmlHttpReq = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xmlHttpReq.open(‘POST’, strURL, true);

This is just FYI for anyone who happens to encounter this error. It’s a simple fix. This somewhat goes without saying, but make sure your request returns from the server as text/xml or you’ll likely still encounter issues.

Categories
Blog

Some Changes

I just made some changes around here, cleaning up some of the older code. Most notable changes:

  • Comments – New lighter ajax comment script in place, this should make the pages load a little faster (actually quite a bit if your on 56k). Could use a little help testing so feel free to leave a comment. If it doesn’t work contact me.
  • Menu Bar – Some CSS changes to make it look more consistent across browsers, and it now highlights the current section.

Some other, more obscure changes were also made. Let me know if there is trouble.

Categories
Google

Google Calendar

Google Calendar seems to have now launched. Overall it’s a solid ajax friendly web app. Very good user interface, fast, sleek, all the typical stuff you’d expect in a Google service.

Though, when will we see “Google Sync” so we can use it with our client side program, PDA, Cell Phone, etc? Seems like until then, it’s just a toy. I don’t know about anyone else, but at least 50% of the time I use a calendar… it’s not in front of a computer.

Categories
Web Development

AJAX is so much fun

Took a little time today to do some AJAX programming. So cool. I’ve got some neat stuff here. Hopefully in coming months I’ll be showing some of it off.

Well, that’s about it for now, a little busy with school work.

Categories
Internet Mozilla Web Development

Web 2.0 I can’t hear you

There’s been a lot of talk about what seems to be called “Web 2.0” lately. It’s this new renaissance of browser wars, new dot com’s coming about, users contributing content (blogs, wiki’s), more fluid applications using AJAX, rich media over broadband, and all that good stuff. Personally I agree, we are at a great time for the Internet. I barely remember the last time it was this good. Ideas are flowing, and technology is advancing. But how far will it advance?

Using newly discovered (though not new) technologies like AJAX, it becomes possible to make a web page feel rather fluid. Almost to the point of a good client side application. Using something like SVG (or more likely Flash as SVG is still rather new) you can get enhance that even further. These are great. When put together nicely, you get this wonderful complete application. Well not really. Since very early on, computers gave audible feedback. Apparently we lost that in Web 1.0, and haven’t fixed that regression in “Web 2.0”. We leave it to plug ins like Flash, or QuickTime, but is that really appropriate? I will suggest it’s not. Audio has been rather closely integrated to computing since the beginning from those beeps computers made when keyboards really clicked as you typed. Auditory feedback is part of a complete application (that error beep when you do something wrong in an OS for example). We don’t have that on the web.

Innocent Proposal

Yes, I am aware the below proposal will upset some people, but hear me out before attacking.

I propose the web push to make OGG or find some other open solution to solve part of this problem. Pre recorded audio that’s compact and patent free so web application developers can provide audio feedback to user problems. OGG has been used by games such as Unreal for some time, so it’s proved to be adequate in quality. It would be perfect for things like voice overs, music, and other pre-defined audio purposes.

Secondly, there’s a need for what is essentially MIDIXML, MIDI in XML format. Something that could easily be generated by a server using JAVA, PHP, PERL, ASP, CF, or what ever language and transmitted. Since XML can be gziped, it could be compact (though a slight latency for gzip reasons). Easy for anyone to generate it would allow for much simpler creation of audio than ever before.

Bonus points for text-to-speech on the web, which would reinvent this whole thing to a new level (imagine using simple xml-like markup to present a human speaking, from within a web application). Combine that with AJAX and filling out your taxes on line could be designed in a way that would be usable. You could get explanations while you enter data, dynamic forms adjusting so you only see what you need to.

If these two formats were included in browsers like we now are seeing with CSS support that finally has started to come of age, Web 2.0 would essentially be able to replicate a client side experience, minus the graphical abilities, though flash can compensate for part of that. Sound isn’t just a frill, it’s partially accessibility. Audible feedback is a good thing. That’s why cars do it (in addition to that light on your dashboard), and aircraft as well “Pull Up!”. Even my cell phone is capable of audible feedback (key press sound, ringing, photo taking, etc.). Yet my computer can’t really do audio when online.

There is an annoyance factor of course (we all hate loud websites), but that could easily be compensated for by a good browser UI which could feature volume controls, including a mute capacity. Ideally plug ins would respect that setting so that the experience is clean and simple. Perhaps a way to have visual notification when audio is used if the user has it muted. This would mitigate the annoyance factor while providing for audible feedback.

Why not plug ins? Because they don’t standardize. We’d never get the penetration that you can get with standards. Look at video, there is still a complete lack of standards between players and codecs. Imagine if CSS was only available with a plug in. Do you think the entire web would download the CSS plug in? No, not likely. The penetration Flash has had is unique, and not likely to repeat itself, so that’s not even an argument. It’s one front the browser has no hand on. With video the browser at least has GIF support (which is on occasion used for things like webcams), it supports, images and text natively. But really no audio support.

Imagine a web application that could verbally explain a form to you (filing out taxes online?), or the ability to have a service like Gmail open in a tab, and get notification of a new message via audio. No javascript alert(). Imagine an online store with complete audio support (so far we really have only iTunes, which is proprietary).

Audio on the web has been misguided for a long time. I think Web 2.0 needs to address this. Audio is a part of computing.

The web is capable of so much, but it only touches 1 sense. If the web reaches 2 senses it doubles it’s potential. Perhaps in a few years I’ll be able to suggest SmellML or TouchML or TasteML.