Where did the data come from?

This page is a part of "Actual Browser Sizes"

The data used in this report came from 3 months of data gathering from 5 different sites. The data was gathered automatically using JavaScript (read more about it here).

Site profile

The data was collected from a wide audience.

This site - Baekdal.com
Two teenage fashion sites.
One woman fashion site.
One Male fashion site.

Geographical location

The data collection covers "most" of the world, with Europe and North America as the dominant sources.

Browsers & Operating Systems

Looking at what browser and operating systems people use there is nothing new. Internet Explorer is dominent browser, followed by Firefox. Windows is the dominant platform, followed by Macs.

How the data was collected

The data was collected using a small piece JavaScript that recorded and submitted the following information.

Display width/height
Available display width/height
Browser width/height
Browser type & version
Operating system

All the sites was also using Google Analytics at the time, collecting data like geographical location, screen colors etc.

To know more about how the data was collected, see the Browser Screen Size Tester. (also, a little movie)

Comments

Jesper Rønn-Jensen - Nov. 27, 2006

Hi Thomas.

How many users did you collect data from during the three months?

Thomas Baekdal - Nov. 27, 2006

Hi Jesper,

Jeff asked a similar question on the main report page, so let me copy me response to him here as well - He asked if 5 sites was enough to represent the real world - and how much data I collected:

No, 5 sites are far from enough to represent general web behavior - and even if you get 100,000 sites it would still not be enough. You actually got 3 problems with data gathering.

Not enough data, and it does not represent the general population (as in this case)
Too much data, and the general picture no longer represent you as an individual.
Somewhere in the middle and you got both problems

What I can say is that my collection base represents a very wide audience. The 5 fashion sites represent almost all ages (except kids and seniors). The people on this site is mainly technology minded (and probably male for the most parts), so that is a bit skewed. There is also a bigger focus on Europeans, than other continents.

The other problem is how the data was collected. There are generally many ways to collect the data. The most common is:

once for every page view
once for every visit
once for every absolute visit, unless the view sizes is changed (the one I used)

Each method can be seen as both good and bad - depending on what you want with the data.

The actual amount of data was about 650,000 data points.

An important thing to keep in mind is that my study looks a lot like similar studies done by other people (see links above). Too me this means that there must be some truth to this. But, if you want accurate data I recommend you setup your own stats :o)