Dr. Igor Kotlyar, president at OmniDate Inc.

May 2010

Data is provided by w3counter.com

• Somewhat “Lighter” more responsive overall  feeling.
• Plugins (Add-ons)
• One address bar that accepts both URLs and search queries (Saves you a mouse click or “Tab” key to switch the focus to the search bar in Safari)
• Clear on-screen indication that your download has started. Download progress integration into main window is also more useful than floating download window that often gets lost among other windows.
• Nice and settled UI animation affects.
• Smart history search in address bar. You can enter any part of the URL to trigger suggestions.
• Independent Incognito window as opposite to Safari’s “private mode” the applies to entire browse session.
• Right looking tabs. ( I know, I know…)

A rumor that Apple is releasing Safari 5 in a good news indeed and list of news features looks like Safari is going to give Chrome a fight (at least on it’s home platform)

• Safari Reader: Click on the new Reader icon to view articles on the web in a single clutter-free page.
• Improved Performance: Safari 5 executes Javascript up to 25% faster than Safari 4. Better page caching and DNS prefetching speed up browsing.
• Bing Search Option: New Bing search option for Safari’s Search Field, in addition to Google and Yahoo.
• Improved HTML5 support: Safari supports over a dozen new HTML5 features including Geolocation, full screen for HTML5 video, closed caption for HTML5 video, new sectioning elements (article, aside footer, header, hgroup, nav and section), HTML5, AJAX History, EventSource, WebSocket, HTML 5 draggable attribute, HTML 5 forms validation, and HTML 5 Ruby.
• Safari Developer Tools: A new Timeline Panel in the Web Inspector shows how Safari interacts with a web site and identifies areas for optimization. New keyboard shortcuts make it aster to switch between panels.
• Smarter Address Field: The Smart Address Field can now match text against the titles of web pages in History and Bookmarks, as well as any part of their URL.
• Tab Settings: Automatically open new webpages in tabs instead of in separate windows.
• Hardware Acceleration for Windows: Use the power of the computer’s graphics processor to smoothly display media and effects on PC, as well as Mac.
• Search History with Date: A new date indicator in Full History Search shows when web pages were viewed.
• Top Sites/History Button: Switch easily between Top Sites and Full History Search with a new button that appears at the top of each view.
• Private Browsing Icon: A “Private” icon appears in the Smart Address Field when Private Browsing is on. Click on the icon to turn off Private Browsing.
• DNS Prefetching: Safari looks at the addresses of links on web pages and can load those pages faster.
• Improved Page Caching: Safari can add additional types of web pages to the cache so they load quickly.
• XSS Auditor: Safari can filter potentially malicious scripts used in cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
• Improved JavaScript Support: Safari allows web applications that use JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) to run faster and more securely.

Currently it’s just rumours but wait isn’t going to be long. We’ll know in a few days.

Thanks for everything Elia!

Shawn Pringle, CEO at TopNet Solutions, Inc.

“Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.” - Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, March 22, 2010.

1280×800 screen resolution gives us 1257×600 real life room users see without scrolling in the following browsers:

• Mac
  • Safari
  • Camino
  • FireFox 3
  • Omniweb 5
  • Opera 9
• Windows
  • IE6
  • IE7
  • IE8
  • FireFox 3
  • Opera 9
  • Safari

Still it would be a good idea to user target audience study or web analytics data or at least common sense when deciding what minimun resolution you need to support.

Government/Community websites should still support minimum of 1024×768 providing ability to access data to 99% of the market.

Retail/Financial industries usually don’t upgrade hardware and bank terminals until it is absolutely necessary and 1024×768 may be still safer choice for them.

IT industry routinely tries to be at the tech edge . Big screens, high resolutions of latest note- and netbooks make it  to take advantage of 1280×800.

These statistics are based on W3Schools users.

Here is content usage breakdown:

• Most popular activity is still text messaging (63,5%)
• Web surfing (28%)
• Games (28.6%)
• Accessing Social network sites (17%)
• Listening to music on mobile phone (12.8%)

Accessing social network has a boost of 3.5% in last month, text messaging has 1.5% while paying games have not  changed much.

Blackberry is still most popular device used by 43% of the smart phone owners. Apple has a share of 25%. Microsoft gave up 4% to Google which has 7.1% (4.3% up for 3 months). Palm is in trouble and down 2.1% to 5.7% total maker share.