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W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers.

These facts indicate that the browser figures below are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at least 80% of the users.

More like 75%. It requires Windows XP, nothing earlier, not even 2000. The latest stats I can find put WinXP at only about 75% penetration as of August.

About 10% have it turned off acording to w3schools. It's kind of like that anoying 20% that still use 800/600. ;)

Books:
The Zen of CSS Design, Eric Meyer on CSS. Two excellent books to get you started. The concept of CSS layout design is the big hurdle, once you figure it out, it's a breeze and quite fun.

Websites
www.w3schools.com - Excellent for html too. Read up here about semantics. http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/ - Something else from W3C. This shows you some stuff you will need once you start getting the concepts of CSS down.

Here's some advice from me: Start with healthy HTML. If your HTML is not valid AND semantic, CSS will be very difficult to learn. If you are not familiar with xhtml semantics, I recommend you spend some time here: http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp . If your code is not neat and organized, if you are not closing all your tags, CSS will not be nice to you.

I hope this points you in the right direction!

I agree, IE7 market share will be mainly previous IE6 users, when IE6 was released, its market share climbed up and IE5's dropped down at approximately the same rate. IE7 market share will be mainly previous IE6 users. Firefox users will usually stick to it, even that IE7 features tabs support, Firefox still has a lot to offer, mainly the wide range of extensions available.

Sorry, I copied the wrong link. The most recent information I have has Linux with a 3.5% market share. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp. Not exactly staggering numbers. Besides, most Macs have an upgrade option for ATI video cards. Therefore they offer support as well. Regardless of the ACTUAL numbers, we're still talking a VAST minority here. Dress it up, call it what you want, Linux is still the least used OS among desktop systems. I stand by my previous comment.

Little to no support for "most" OSes? You must mean "most" in the sense of "lots of tiny changes between different versions being different"

What it comes down to is that a)someone who's *GASP* NOT a programmer can use flash to create dynamic content, which to this day AJAX hasn't really made happen, and b) it IS supported on the MAJORITY of OSes, even though a wide variety make up the final 3.4% of the market.

There seems to be an ego among *nix fanboys that if there isn't a linux version it's not worth using...but really, that just means you haven't gotten off your ass and written one. Who's fault is that? Isn't that what makes linux so 733t[sarcasm]?

Flash holds the majority hand. You represent (with your "most" OSes) less than 4% of even POTENTIAL users, and most of those machines are un-manned servers. Realistically, they've let about 1.5-2% of the market go by not giving away a free plugin. I think they'll survive. And way to pull a FoxNews by saying "most OSes" when you know very well that you are in the vast minority. Misleading intentionaly to proove a point just means you're on the weaker side of the argument - and still a lier.

Source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp

The w3schools stats show no growth for the alternative browsers in 2006.

While the IE7 beta has a slight edge on Opera and is growing at the rate of 1% every two months. Browser Statistics Month by Month

You can argue the details, but it is not so easy to ignore the trend lines.

75% of those sufing the web. OS Platform Stats 100% of the home PCs aold since mid-summer of 2001. The only significant requiremet is SP2.

The W3Schools stats suggest otherwise:

July IE 7 1.9% Opera 1.4% Browser Statistics

The only movement I see is from IE6 to IE7. The "alternative" browsers stand pretty much where they did last November.

Yep in the future, everyone will be using the web on their cell phone. Any day now. *twiddles thumbs* But according to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp, not today. So keep up the over-designing for non-existent users. I'll make websites in 1/4 the time, and my clients will stay happily where they are.

Click here to see how to make an html link properly.

"As most readers know, I'm a blogger."

That's like saying, "As most readers know, I am a computer operator."

CSS stands for Conspicuously Sketchy Sheets
Here's a tutorial John - http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

No kidding. Next thing you know, they are going to want their own schools!

In the spring of 2003 XP had 30% of the market. Three years later, XP has 75% of the market. Users upgrade, they do not migrate to the alternative OS. OS Platform Statistics

"Bloat" is strictly a Geek obession. Vista Premium should run just fine on your midline Dell.

Ok. Here is a start, W3 Schools hits. You'll notice that opera is not popular among people who learn about making websites. This is just one website, but they are more likely to have alternate browser hits than some. Since people don't use opera, I'm concluding they don't like opera or don't know about opera. Either way, opera has not been successful. Firefox, in constrast, has been successful. Many people have heard of it. Both of my parents have tried it. I called them and asked if they have ever heard of opera. Neither of them had.

I am quite terrible at statistics so I won't even try to meet your requirements. I do feel that I've show a subset of the population does not use opera. If they preferred opera, they would certainly use opera. In a given day, I use several browsers including Firefox, Safari, IE and even lynx on occasion. I don't use opera.

Of confirm it by looking at sites browser stats. This one shows Mac userbase doubling in 3 years. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp

Well one could go with history and note the fact that EVERY new version of Windows has been a lot slower than the predecessor. Meanwhile every version of OS X has been faster than the predecessor.

If you look at the unit sales of Macs from Apple quarterly reports, you'll see that they is usually significantly larger growth YoY that in the overall PC market. That means growing market share.

Or confirm it by looking at sites browser stats. This one shows Mac userbase doubling in 3 years. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp

Last I checked Windows Vista is in Beta. So just how does anyone know how it's performance is at this time.

we not told by the Apple folks that the marketshare was going to boom with the release of 10.0? Then again with 10.2 and so on? And then again when they went to Intel...

in fact the market share has decreased since the release of 10.0...

Ok ok... adoption was a bad choice of words. But that would be interesting too. The point is, the lines don't represent the market, but a pipe dream. to quote w3school's stats page: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp "Statistics are important information. What you can read from the statistics below is that Internet Explorer 6 is the dominating browser, XP is the most popular operating system, and most users are using a display with 1024x768 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors." Does IE6 look like the dominating browser on the map? No. It looks like Opera should look on the map...

How can this be insightful? This must be the biggest collection of web design misconceptions I've ever read.

• You're supposed to separate semantics and style, because it makes the pages more flexible, accessible, and terse. Everything on a web page has some semantics (if marked up properly) and a style which completely depends on the capabilities of the client. If you believe these are inseparable, I bet you've never used a textual or audio browser. Input elements are no different from other markup in this respect.
• An HTML page cannot be XML. At least, it cannot be valid HTML and valid XML, except for trivial cases. XHTML is valid XML, but it wasn't created because of CSS. It was created because of stricter syntax rules (leading to easier parsing). CSS works fine with any XML, but millions of pages use it successfully with old-style HTML. And I'd love to know what kind of positioning can only be handled by attributes - I've never seen a case of this.
• Only uninformed zealots will tell you that tables are always bad. Tables have a well-known semantic meaning, but that does not include layout. DIVs also have a well-defined meaning: Division. DIVs separate the markup into parts, which can then be styled (and positioned) at the whim of the developer. But, being completely flexible with regard to visual representation, they can be difficult to handle for novices - Been there, done that. Positioning is IMO the only really difficult part of CSS, mostly because of client bugs. Oh, and DIVs are block elements, even though you can override this.
• HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are not the same thing! HTML defines contents, and can be used for web pages, help files, presentations (S5), and books. CSS defines style, and can be used for any HTML or XML markup. JavaScript defines functionality, and is a full-fledged programming language. It's a pipe dream that any number of languages with vastly different capabilities and goals can be merged into a consistent whole without adding oodles of complexity.

To answer your question: CSS is not an "elite thing". It's really quite simple, if you run through a tutorial or two. I recommend W3Schools' tutorial to start with and for reference, Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing with Web Standards to learn practical CSS, and searching Digg, Reddit, and especially del.icio.us to learn lots more.

How can this be insightful? This must be the biggest collection of web design misconceptions I've ever read.

• You're supposed to separate semantics and style, because it makes the pages more flexible, accessible, and terse. Everything on a web page has some semantics (if marked up properly) and a style which completely depends on the capabilities of the client. If you believe these are inseparable, I bet you've never used a textual or audio browser. Input elements are no different from other markup in this respect.
• An HTML page cannot be XML. At least, it cannot be valid HTML and valid XML, except for trivial cases. XHTML is valid XML, but it wasn't created because of CSS. It was created because of stricter syntax rules (leading to easier parsing). CSS works fine with any XML, but millions of pages use it successfully with old-style HTML. And I'd love to know what kind of positioning can only be handled by attributes - I've never seen a case of this.
• Only uninformed zealots will tell you that tables are always bad. Tables have a well-known semantic meaning, but that does not include layout. DIVs also have a well-defined meaning: Division. DIVs separate the markup into parts, which can then be styled (and positioned) at the whim of the developer. But, being completely flexible with regard to visual representation, they can be difficult to handle for novices - Been there, done that. Positioning is IMO the only really difficult part of CSS, mostly because of client bugs. Oh, and DIVs are block elements, even though you can override this.
• HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are not the same thing! HTML defines contents, and can be used for web pages, help files, presentations (S5), and books. CSS defines style, and can be used for any HTML or XML markup. JavaScript defines functionality, and is a full-fledged programming language. It's a pipe dream that any number of languages with vastly different capabilities and goals can be merged into a consistent whole without adding oodles of complexity.

To answer your question: CSS is not an "elite thing". It's really quite simple, if you run through a tutorial or two. I recommend W3Schools' tutorial to start with and for reference, Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing with Web Standards to learn practical CSS, and searching Digg, Reddit, and especially del.icio.us to learn lots more.

Ah, yes, the last page on the internet. "We hope that you have enjoyed surfing the Web..."

Here's a FM for you to read.

At first I thought this was just a CSS replacement for <table><tr><td>, but it does truly mean that you can completely change your layout by switching stylesheets, while keeping the "layout power" of tables. Using absolute positioning or floating blocks always seemed a little deficient to me.

Well according to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp win 98 has a 1,8 % market share.

That means that a broken 6 year old os that people have to be crazy to use has well over half the market share linux does.

Current numbers:

W3Schools Browser Stats

WinXP W2000 Win98 WinNT W2003 Linux Mac
74.0% 11.2% 1.8% 0.3% 1.9% 3.3% 3.6%

Obviously this is not a totally valid study for the Internet as a whole (it also says 25% of the browsers in April were Firefox), but if we say the W3Schools demographic is about the same as the Firefox demographic, and also consider the user base for Win98 is dropping by about .2% per month, then the developers really shouldn't feel too guilty about not adding new features for Win98 users after v2.0.

On a related note, is there another free browser out there that specifically tries to be compatible with as many EOL'd OSes as possible?

W3Schools Browser Statistics

You're welcome.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp
Read the stats for yourself...or just read it right here.
2006 WinXP W2000 Win98 WinNT W2003 Linux Mac
April 74.0% 11.2% 1.8% 0.3% 1.9% 3.3% 3.6%
It shows that only 2.1% of people are Win98 or WinNT. That means that the other 97.9% will be unaffected by this.

For me it has never been enought to know the technology... I had to have a project to work on. So the place to start is to define what you want to do.

Everything is built on top of something else. Every idea comes from someplace. And if you know what you want to do then you can investigate stuff that is at its base what it is you want to accomplish.

Best places to start W3 Schools...

That covers the basics of everything.
I work in Flash quite a bit and people ask me where to start learning flash. With the project learning method I send them to http://gotoandlearn.com. The tutorials on that site use some of the industry proven Actionscipt methods and give a good base level knowledge.

So find a project and get cracking.

--Chris

Actually it's more like 10% without javascript.

Plus search engines don't grok javascript.

It's probably worth mentioning that the only relationship between java and javascript is a common prefix.

Microsoft is once again leveraging their monopoly in their Windows domain to control unfairly users' choice to some other market or product, in this case, search engine choice. It could be problematic, maybe even legally, that Microsoft sets the default search to theirs, even though they offer other choices.

Hey, man, I know what you mean. Hold on, I need to open this other page in a new tab... there we go. Alright, I agree. I mean Firefox is definitely better in the standards department than its Microshaft counterpart, but it still isn't perfect. Why the hell doesn't Mozilla get faster volunteers?! They are a "corporation" now, after all. I mean half of the SVG standards don't work on Mozilla browsers. Check out the w3schools tutorial and you'll see that all the animation examples are just static pages. Of course, it is ABM - anything but M$. I really wish Mozilla would demonstrate their dedication to the web and a standardized web by fully standardizing their browser. Hell, I have a T1 connection; I can handle a few extra megabytes. I am also outraged at how MathML doesn't render absolutely perfectly without 3 extra fonts. That is inexcusable to me, working at a lab as I do. And I too wish that CSS was more fully supported. I'd much rather use the flexible steel of predefined CSS than the brittle rubberband known as dynamic JavaScript. So, in summary, browser companies or developers should stop adding so many features but should focus more on keeping up with new standards. One new standard a week is no big deal; any good businessman knows that to keep ahead, you have to develop quality with haste. I swear, I'd switch to Amaya if only it had better features.

The Microsoft platform monopoly is very weak right now. Any web application designed for a single version of M$ will fail for about half of your users. While they still have sizable majority of OS use, you can't count on a specific version being present. When you permutate that with browser used, your numbers fall even more.

Less than 60% of people use IE 6. That means about two in five people will not be able to use this stupid service.

Even M$ OS share is slipping. XP, the "dominant" platform only has 79% of the market. If you take out what people use at work, the Linux + Mac percentage is probably better than 10% now.

So, while IE 6 is "available" to a majority of users, 25% prefer something else. In short, they care.

If your school cares, they won't be using this service.

Techincally Firefox is rendering it wrong. The page uses a ton of realtive font sizes [font size="+1"]. The old W3 standards in HTML 4.01 was that no font could go beyond -6 and +6. Naughty Drudge Report doesn't properly close its [font] tags and uses [font size="+7"].

IE assumes anything over +6 is only a +6. The Gecko engine just keeps increasing the size proportionally.

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_font.asp

However, it occurs to me that the best measure of Microsoft's success in security is the market price for 10,000 infections. For example, if Vista turns out to be an inpenatrible tank, we should see the price go up to 50 or 100 bucks, maybe more.

The only problem is that the effect is far from being immediate. Look at Windows XP for example.
It took a little less than 2.5 years (April/May 2004 - October 25, 2001) for it to hold more than 50% of the OS space.
And thats really only for the more informed internet users - those who visit W3Schools. In the real (home pc) world the results are probably a little more inclined towards the unsecure side. And even if we leave out the Win98 machines, how much of the XP/2000 machines are properly patched? And how much will continue to be unpatched XP machines after Vista? And thats even without taking into account the Vista adoption problems.

No torrent, but w3schools (sort of) has a tutorial.

Download.

On a more serious note, in a few years, won't there be wireless internet in the vast majority of places that you would be doing work? Why not work on getting internet everywhere, rather than a dumbed-down crippled version that uses up a big chunk of hard drive space? It seems like the opposite direction of where things are going. With the number of emerging internet based services that used to be only on the desktop (ie. office applications, image management, etc.) it seems like everything is moving to be -online-, not the other way around.

That took you six months? It took me six minutes. Thank you W3Schools.com http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_howto.asp

It's completely dependent on what language I'm coding in.

When I was coding in PHP... php.net was an absolute godsend of being both a reference to all the functions and objects and a repository of user's experiences and tips for the items... almost all of my php issues were solved via that site.

When I've been doing Javascript code (which isn't a huge amount I'll admit), then I've found W3School's reference pages to be invaluable.

Now that I'm doing my coding in the open source language Laszlo I've found their included documentation that comes with the developer install (web based and with live examples to tinker with), and the community coding forums to be an enormous help, and have made learning and getting a lot out of this language really not that hard.

I really think that trying to localise coding support isn't going to work... the coders should just make use of the best forums and resources for the language they're using. Each time I have to use a new language I have a new folder in my bookmarks for reference pages and forums for that language that I find on the web... you find almost everything you need that way really.

And know how to use Google damn well!

and here's mine

Only on Slashdot will you hear it implied that a product with 65% marketshare might be "dead."

According to the w3schools site, As of Feb2006, market share is approximately:

Windows : 89.8%
Linux.. : 03.4%
Mac.... : 03.6%

Most notably, the overall share of Mac and Linux have grown steadily while Windows has shrunk at about the same rate. I agree that I doubt MS decided not to support EFI based solely on the new Intel Mac strategy, but marketshare analyses are not the way to point it out.

The point comes down to this: MS would benefit by allowing Mac hardware to boot Windows. A copy sold is a copy sold. Besides, MS already sells a Mac version of Virtual PC with a Windows license for hardly more than just a copy of Windows itself, so it's clear that they have no issue with people running Windows on Mac hardware.

I'm more willing to bet that EFI support is just one more vaporware feature that MS ran out of time to implement for Vista. Every time I hear of yet another Vista feature being axed, I have to wonder if anyone will care about Vista when its released -- what will it actually do for us?

Who indeed?


Dumbass.

So you really think that millions of people will throw their otherwise perfectly good computers

No, I said all new computers would be sold with this hardware.

Given the rapid obselecence and replacement rate of computers, a very substantial percentage of them will be rountinely replaced in a mere four years or so. And that is completely neglecting any ADDITIONAL pressures to upgrade to these new systems that will increasingly appear in a year or two or three.

What percentace of people are using PCs more than six or seven years old? And what percentage of them would continue using such PCs if they found those systems increasingly unable to run new software, increasigly unable to or read new file types, increasingly unable to view webpages?

Is there really any point in quibbling over how long it will take to hit say 70% deployment? Not every long at all. It took four years - FOUR YEARS - for windows XP to hit 70% marketshare, as measured by internet browser user agents. And if anything, those statistics are biased against Windows users and towards Linux and Mac users, and they are registering over a 25% userbase with Firefox.

Develoment on Trusted Computing started a decade ago. These are long term business plans. You can't seriously argue that any meaningfull percentage of the population uses ten year old PCs.

If ISPs were to announce that they no longer supported 10 year old PC, do you seriously think there would be enough percentage of users getting locked out to stop ISPs from ending that support? No. That maybe 2% of people with ancient obsolete hardware would simply be force to upgrade to modern compatible machines or see their internet connections fail. The ISP isn't locking out 10 year old computers, they just aren't supporting them any more. And if you can't get them to work, well too bad.

Go to the store and see how many NEW programs you can buy that will still play on 10 year old hardware?

That software will run on the new machines.

As long as a significant number of old dog computers exist, programmers will write software for them and most websites will work just fine.

Sure, write all of the old style software you like. That software will run on the old machines and the new machines. And everyone howbuys a new computer or replacxes an old computer will be getting a build in Trust chip "for free".

Yes, tons of websites will have no interest in using the Trust system. But can you seriously tell me that people will NOT upgrade to new computers if they increasingly run into websites that don't work? At first just 1% then 2% of websites. Then 10% and maybe 20%. Can you seriously tell me *MOST* people won't buy new computers when 20% of the websites are spitting out error messages about their obsolete incompatible hardware? can you seriosuly say 10% or 20% of websites might not use the new system to enforce ads if 70% of the internet population has the hardware to support it?

There's a coming change over to IPv6 anyway, and a lot of old hardware and software is going to be incompatible and obsoleted and phased out in the transition anyway. I am making a wild guess... a very plausible guess... that they will seize the opportunity tie the two transitions together as much as possible. They'd get a free ride on the back of IPv6.

iTunes

So they roll out a new music service with the exact same terms as iTunes, and it only works on the new hardware, and the RIAA lets the new service undercut the origional iTunes on price. The RIAA will love the new hardware. They will be more than happy to forgo their usual profit margins to run "introductory rates" and "introductory terms" to drive adoption. They can always raise prices and change the terms and DRM restrictions two or three or four years later. They know they have to basically match the current DRM terms to attract the initial market. And they will be thrilled at the ne

You also could have used a makeashorterlink URL. Which would have the advantage that one can first have a look at the real link to find out if it really points to the expected (after all, noone hinders you to make a tinyurl link to goatse, and then claim it's to some other, work-safe site). I almost never click on tinyurl links.
People who don't want the intermediate site can disable it. Note that it is not the creator of the link who disables the page, but the user of the link.

BTW, you would also have had the option to use a plain old HTML anchor tag, so slashdot wouldn't have to parse the URL. Or to replace the problematic characters (commas, I guess?) by their hex replacement (%xx where xx are the corresponding hex digits, e.g. %2C for the comma).

What you won't have is the 97% of users that have remained loyal to Windows and the Mac. OS Platform Stats (January 2006)

http://www.w3schools.com/
Has some very good stuff for begginers.
They cover most basic .NET questions and start up tutorials.
And a whole lot of other stuff that might be usefull for IT programmers.

"it's the HOBBYISTS who've done more to advance computing"
Excuse me?

Don't get me wrong, linux is great and whatnot, blah blah - but can you REALLY compare the impact that windows has had on the computer industry to the impact that linux has had?
We can look at this in two ways.

First off: the usage statistics - w3schools lists the usage of linux at 3.3% - .2 percentage points lower than mac usage! Back in 1999, WebTV had a higher market share than linux.

Admittedly, this is for browsing the web, but it's a pretty good start, I think.

The second way to look at it is to examine how much Windows has pushed forward the adoption of computing for the average user. And so, I prove my point thusly: Have you ever tried to get your mother to use Linux? Now, slowly, easy-to-use distros are coming out, but even 5 years ago that just wasn't the case. There is a HARSH linux learning curve that's like a cliff compared to the gentle, rolling hills of Windows usage.

I'm not saying windows is a better OS, but I AM saying that it is an easier-to-use OS.

Linux zealoutry is great, but can we at least attempt to keep it realistic?