Technical Constraints

I l @ ve RuBoard

The next step is to define constraints for the project. You need to make the customer aware that constantly changing technology will inevitably involve some constraints on how potential audiences view the site. This work will include reviewing the Web logs for the customer's existing site and further analysis of recent trends. Items to be defined include the user environment information in the following list.

• What percentage of the target audience is using each of the following operating systems?

  - Mac OS 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, X

  - Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, XP

  - Other

• What percentage of the target audience is using each of the following browsers?

  - Netscape 4.77, 6

  - Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0

  - Other

• What percentage of the target audience is using each of the following screen colors?

  - 8 bit (256 colors)

  - 16 bit (65,536 colors)

  - 24 bit (16,777,216 colors)

• What percentage of the target audience is using each of the following screen resolutions ?

  - 585 by 386 pixels (AOL TV)

  - 640 by 480 pixels

  - 800 by 600 pixels

  - 1,024 by 768 pixels

  - 1,152 by 864 pixels

  - 1,280 by 1024 pixels

• What percentage of the target audience and what percentage of access are connecting at each of the following connection speeds?

  - 14.4K baud or less

  - 28.8K baud

  - 33.6K baud

  - 56.6K baud

  - 128K baud

• What percentage of the target audience has installed each of the following plug-ins?

  - LiveAudio

  - Flash

  - AVI

  - QuickTime

  - Beatnik

  - RealPlayer G2

  - Acrobat

  - ShockWave

  - MediaPlayer

From this research, try to assess what the minimum requirements are by analyzing the percentages. If any platforms, browsers, and applications are being used by more than 10 percent of your audience, they should be supported; if used by less than 10 percent but greater than 5 percent, look at the trends. If it is an older technology, chances are that it will be decreasing in usage and that it shouldn't be recommended. If it is a new technology, chances are that these numbers are only going to increase and supporting it may be a good idea.

Unfortunately, supporting multiple applications isn't an exact science. You probably learned this when you tried to line up graphics to appear the same in Internet Explorer and Netscape. For this reason you should note which is the most popular technology and focus on supporting that first. Make the customer aware that other applications that the Web site should support may not appear exactly the same way. The Web site will be as functional, but it may look a little different. Don't feel bad about this; you can't control the fact that HTML is interpreted differently from browser to browser and platform to platform. Just make sure that the customer is aware of this from the start.

I l @ ve RuBoard