Re: HTML testing: browser defaults & slow download emulation

["Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- JAEDWORKS -dot- COM>]

At 8:16 AM -0800 1/5/99, John Cornellier wrote:
>Anyone know where I can get a list of the default settings for
>each browser to save me reinstalling? Anyone have any reliable
>statistics on what browsers are used and what, if any,
>deviations from the default settings are common?

I've heard statistics ranging around 10% for the percentage of users who
change their default settings. However, this varies a lot depending on the
audience and the site. So does the ratio and range of different browsers
you can expect. (The goal, of course, is a page that's readable and usable
regardless of the user's settings and browser.)

For what it's worth, the common browser defaults are text #000000 (black),
background #CCCCCC (gray) or #FFFFFF (white), links #0000FF (blue), and
visited links #FF0000 (red) or #663399 (purple). Font is usually Times or
Times New Roman 12-point; monospaced font is Courier or Courier New. There
are variations even for the Big Two browsers, depending on platform and
version, but this will give you a general idea of the default look.

>On a related note, does anyone know how to emulate a page
>loading on a slow (14400) connection? I know HomeSite has
>download time properties, but I want to see how it would
>*look* while loading.

Some of the details aren't predictable, but there are some useful
generalizations that may help, even without actually doing a 14.4 download:

- Text will begin loading first.

- Graphics will load in more-or-less random orde (unless you use techniques
other than HTML to influence load order).

- If a graphic's height and width attributes are set in the HTML source,
the text around it will be displayed, leaving a blank box of the right size
for the graphic to appear in once it's loaded; if these attributes are not
set, any text after the graphic won't appear until the graphic has been
downloaded and rendered. (This is generally considered a bad thing; in
other words, make sure to set height and width.)

- None of a table's contents will appear until the entire table is
downloaded. This means that if your page uses the regrettably-popular
"<table width=600> (entire page contents here) </table>" construct, the
user will be staring at a blank window until the whole table is downloaded.
This gets especially bad if there are graphics for which the aforementioned
height and width attributes aren't set: nothing at all gets displayed until
not only the text, but *all* the graphics are downloaded.

- Rendering time can be more significant than download time. Once the data
is downloaded, the browser still has to spend time computing where
everything should go and laying out the page, and even on a slow
connection, this process can actually take longer than the download. The
rendering time depends partly on the user's computer, of course, and partly
on the complexity of the page. If you have a slower computer available, it
may be useful for you to take a look at how long it takes to show your
pages.

--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com
http://www.jaedworks.com
Morning people may be respected, but night people are feared.


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