Career Stats: Shane Warne the Musical (.com.au)
Very generously, the producers of Shane Warne the Musical have given me access to their website stats for the purposes of this post.
All statistics below relate to the period from opening night – December 10, ’08 – until mid March ‘09; during this period there were 25,377 visitors leaving 96,867 page impressions.
Of the site statistics I have access to; SWTM provides an example of a site with a cross-section of visitors, from multiple age groups and backgrounds. This is all conjecture on my behalf; Google Analytics is yet to report sex, age group, and economic circumstances (but they’re probably working on it).
Caching on the Google AJAX Libraries API
Using the Google AJAX Libraries API, there are several options for specifying the version numbers of the library you wish to use, for example the following URLs all point to the latest version – at the time of writing – of jQuery.
- http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js,
- http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.js, and,
- http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.0/jquery.min.js
The first uses the latest release in the version 1 tree, the second the latest in the version 1.3 tree, and the third the release 1.3.0 exactly. What I found interesting – and discovered accidently – is the browser caching times for each of these urls; the first two are cached for an hour, the third for twelve months.
The vastly different caching times make perfect sense, in the first two cases, the developer is expecting an upgrade to the latest version, and doesn’t want to wait up to twelve months for it; in the third case the developer doesn’t expect an upgrade so an extended caching period has no effect.
To take full advantage of the Google servers, as described in a recent article by Dave Ward, the caching times suggest it’s best to specify the full version of the library you wish to use.
google.load Method – Update Jan 24, 2009
Resetting List Styles
I have the opportunity to use a generic reset and base stylesheet on a CDN free of charge; before jumping in, they need be evaluated. I’m not a particular fan of reset stylesheets, but if I have the chance for my pages to load faster, I’ll take it.
I’ve decided not to use these stylesheets due to a single selector in the reset stylesheet, li{list-style:none;}. Resetting and subsequently redefining list styles causes problems for nested lists.
Why I will not be dropping support for IE6
Increasingly I’m reading of web developers deciding to drop IE6 from their list of supported browsers, usually, because of its creative interpretation of CSS standards, besides IE7 is over a year old, and, IE8 about to be released.
I’ve decided to continue support for IE6 as it’s still in wide use – especially in corporate environments – and, I don’t think it needs to take a lot of work to develop for. I’ll say that again, I don’t think IE6 is as bad it’s sometimes made out to be.
JavaScript Equal Height Columns
The desire for equal height columns in a CSS layout is nothing new; there are many solutions available, some use JavaScript, others use CSS with negative margins, and then, there’s the faux columns method using background images. All of these methods have their place as perfectly valid solutions, and, depending on the situation, may be the best solution available.
Base JavaScript File
Upcoming posts on JavaScript will include references to functions in my base JavaScript file; rather than explain these functions each time, they’ll be detailed in this post for future reference.
There are many pre-written JavaScript examples and functions available, so it’s important to note that all of these functions have been written by others, some include slight changes; all moved to the namespace PWCC, as you’ll see in the source code.
Pagination of articles
Many websites paginate their articles once they reach a particular length – for example, The Age, Times Online, and, The New York Times – there is usually printer version available for users who wish to read the article offline. The purpose of going to this extra effort is to increase advertising impressions; I have no problem with this, someone needs to pay for the content.
The method used to paginate these articles is to have each page, and the printer version, presented as a separate HTML document.
Review – Everything you know about CSS is wrong!
During the week I read Rachel Andrew and Kevin Yank’s Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong! At a little over 100 pages it’s a concise explanation of CSS tables and how they will – and an argument why they should – change the way in which web developers work.
EYKACIW! begins by explaining how today’s web developer has hacked CSS to do things it was never designed to do, in much the same way that we hacked HTML tables in the heady days of the 1990s; floats, faux columns, negative margins, positioning, and, several more tricks now used as a second nature all get dishonourable mentions.
Don’t start with a reset.css
Earlier this year, Jonathan Snook wrote an article on why he doesn’t use a reset.css in which he referred to Eric Meyer’s reset, a short time later, Eric Meyer responded with an article of his own. Unlike many discussions on the web, it wasn’t a mudslinging match, but a sincere discussion of the tools available to web developers.
My initial thoughts were that a reset style sheet, combined with a base style sheet, was a helpful place to start any web project as it reduces the incidence of unexpected results. I thought it was important for the developer to have her own reset and base styles; blindly adopting someone else’s reset and base style sheets will just lead to a different set of surprises.
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