Thursday, May 20, 2010

I like Safari


I decided to spend some of my precious savings to take an online course for the OSHA 40 hr HAZWOPER training in case it might help me get a job. I did the first section and got an error message saying my session timed out and I had to do it all over again. GAH! I logged in and went through the 30 slides again as I read my book, just hitting the right arrow key when the voiceover guy stopped talking. I thought maybe there were browser related issues with the pop-up window method of presentation, so I decided to download Chrome and see how it worked in that browser. Well the first thing I noticed is that the right arrow on the keyboard didn't do anything. Well that sucks. I had the option in Safari to just hold my wireless keyboard in my lap while I recline with my feet up and control the presentation that way. In Chrome I have to sit up and carefully aim the mouse and click in the slide. I just can't help it. I like Safari! People tell me how much they like Chrome, but for me it always has some issue. When I tried to use Chrome on my Mac Mini to watch TV on Hulu the cursor wouldn't go away and just flashed frantically at me the whole time. All this talk about which one is fastest, I don't get it. Never occurs to me that the BROWSER is the problem when I'm waiting for something to download. I just assume it's my lame DSL server in Arkansas. It really doesn't matter if you have a Porsche or diesel Rabbit, if you're siphoning gas into it through a cocktail straw you're gonna have to wait before you can go.


Firefox is far and away the most common browser used to read my blog. I have friends with access to site analytics that say Internet Explorer is the most common among their users, but not Spasms of Accommodation. I use Firefox whenever I have trouble getting Safari to work with forms. But honestly the forms where I used to have to go to Firefox, like my rural electric co-op online bill pay, it works on Safari now. Safari just keeps changing and automatically upgrading.

I was messing around with the analytics settings this morning and found I can sort browser choice by the average time spent on my site. Once you discount the SeaMonkey and Lunascape people at 1 and 2 because they are probably just one person each, it looks like the people that spend the most time on my site are Safari users and people who are stuck waiting somewhere killing time on their smart phone.



So does that mean people who like the same browser are more likely to agree on other matters of opinion? Or does it mean that because I work on my blog in Safari it just looks retarded in Firefox so people click away? Or maybe Firefox users have a really short attention span. I have heard from people who say they like my blog, then admit, "Oh, I didn't really read it. I just looked at the pictures." I bet they were using Firefox.

Back to class!

3 comments:

  1. Or does it mean that you read your own blog (using Safari) enough to skew the results?

    I think the majority of blogs (including the majority of MY blogs, so I'm not pointing any fingers here) are essentially write-only media, in the sense that the only person who's actually reading it is the author.

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  2. I thought of that! Does it count it when I'm logged into the blog in Safari? I don't think so. Maybe if I just go to it to grab a link to send somebody and I'm not logged in that counts. But even if it does I don't even have an iPhone or any of those other Safari devices so that has to be somebody else. My internet service provider is 17th of 4009 service providers ranked by number of visits. That would be mostly me. It's a tiny service provider.

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  3. Sweet!

    I'm totally chroming your stats. And I think I gave you an iphone at one point, too.

    Mostly I'm reading your blog via Google Reader, though, so I'm guessing I don't show up directly at all for that part.

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