Monday, December 21, 2009

Google Browser Size

Anyone who develop/design websites, have this problem that some Browser support some features while other dont. This can be best seen when you compare your site with Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Now Google has come up with something very useful for the designer and developers i.e. Google Browser Size. Using the tool is simple: type a URL in at the top of the screen, and the site will load your webpage in the background. It will then overlay a semi-transparent graphic depicting how much of the web’s population can view each section of your page without scrolling.
  • You can change the opacity of the overlay by clicking the gray boxes next to the word "Opacity" at the top of the window.
  • As you move the mouse around the window, you will see a transparent rectangle following the mouse pointer. This feature allows you to interact normally with the page you're examining even though it has a graphical overlay atop it.
  • The sizes represented in this contour are client area sizes, not browser window sizes. This means they represent the size of the browser without the title bar, toolbars, status bars, etc., and thus give a true representation of how much content can be seen by a particular segment of the Web-using population.
  • Browser Size works best on web pages with a fixed layout aligned to the left. If the content reflows as the width is adjusted or it is centered, then the results can be misleading. In this case, you can obtain more accurate results by reducing the browser width to a percentage column, e.g. 90% and seeing what content falls below the 90% horizontal line.

According to Official Google Blog:
"Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it. If you're a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience. We hope people will use this tool to make their websites better, in turn making the web better for everyone."


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