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Welcome to the Hitsukai web counter and server based bookmarks home
page, the site is currently under development and so the final design and
capabilities of the counter are not fixed at this time, though the design will
continue to move towards a system that can analyse and rate the comparative
popularity of sites based on a combination of the regularity of their visitor
traffic from member bookmarks, the votes placed for and against the site
by users of the system, and the propensity of users to bookmark a site
for future reference.
The aim of the service is to allow users both to share bookmarks with
each other, and to make possible an effective ranking of sites based on
user recommendation rather than using and automated algorithmic method
as is currently most common, comments and suggestions are
gratefully received.
Counter Statistics
Whenever a visitor to a web site opens a page with the Hitsukai
counter embedded in it, the counter collects the information that
someone has visited that site, and also takes note of the way the
site is viewed so that the webmaster is able to ensure that their
site is designed to work with the software used by the visitors,
an overview of the currently most popular software and browser
configurations is presented below.
Browser Statistic Count
For the first time in a couple of years the browser data is becoming
interesting again, by late in the year 2002 Microsoft had effectively
won the ‘browser wars’ with Internet Explorer achieving a highly dominant
85%+ usage share, leaving less than 15% for all other browsers combined
including the once all conquering Netscape Navigator which was relegated to
less than 5%. The situation looked like it could become permanent with no
real change occurring during all of 2003, but in 2004 a combination of repeated
bad press over security holes in Internet Explorer and the rapid improvement
of the open source Firefox browser (based on Mozilla) revived the browser
contest with Firefox taking between 10% and 20% share by the start of 2005
depending on which sites the stats are from, (technical sites show a higher
Firefox usage than average) the result is than any serious web designer now
must ensure that their sites are fully tested and compatible with Firefox or
miss out on a significant and growing number of visitors.
Monitor Display Count
There is little point in getting the HTML coding honed to cross browser
compatible perfection if the result won’t fit on your users screen, so Hitsukai
also provides information on what screen resolution your visitors have chosen;
over the past couple of years the proportion using a display above 1024x768 has
remained at about 10% with only a very slow increase, in the same way those
selecting below 800x600 has stayed relatively constant at about 2% and slowly
declining, the real shift has been the move from 800x600 to 1024x768 which has
reversed from a 5-3 split in favour of the lower resolution to a 5-3 split in
favour of the higher one.
Java Script and OS
If you are intending to use more complex forms of page design than simple HTML
alone it is important to know if your visitors can handle Java Script for dynamic
page design, over the course of 2003 / 2004 the proportion using browsers with Java
Script enabled has increased by about 2% to an average figure of 90%, another
element worth considering is what Operating System your visitors browsers are
running on, this can give some indication of what additional capabilities they
may have to handle particular formats of content, in this area the Hitsukai counter
stats show that Microsoft Windows continues to hold around 90% of the market with the
XP OS increasing in share whilst the older 2000 and 98 systems both decline, Apple Mac
averages a little under 3% and Linux a little over 3%, but both Apple and Linux have
continued to show steady and continuous growth over the last year.
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