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Ask YC: Reliable data on JS/Flash availability?
Wondering if people can point me to decent data on percentages of users who have JS or Flash available and enabled (by default, i.e. without asking them to download or prompt to turn on, etc.).
Driven by the webmail apps for JS and youtube for Flash, I feel like "most" people have them enabled, but I'd like to have some data to go on, especially if it appears one or the other is more available.
If you have your own data to offer, please indicate at least in broad strokes your type of users or the technical level you feel your users have.
- nextmoveone 19y agoLittle outdated but (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) Also, based on analytics from our sites: Approx 86% of our visitors have javascript enabled Approx 100% of our visitors have flash enabled interesting sidenote: 0% of our visitors that user firefox convert.
- eusman 19y agow3schools stats are wrong because its obvious that the audience is more technically sophisticated, thus more probably they are using Fx and have JS disabled. real numbers are 78-80% for IE(6 and 7), 14-16% for Firefox and it depends on country too
- boucher 19y agoAccording to Adobe, flash has the following penetration: http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers... Of course, whether or not you should trust this 100% is up to you. My suspicious self would venture to guess Adobe tries to quantify the total number of users who have installed flash at some point, rather than those who have it currently enabled. I have no idea, though, if there's a big difference in those two metrics. Much less scientifically, I would guess that anyone who has flash enabled, also has javascript enabled. Flash has more security implications, so I'm guessing most people concerned enough to disable javascript would have also disabled flash. Since javascript is also an included feature in essentially every browser flash has a plugin for (and some it does not), its "adoption rate" should then be at least as high. This is just an educated guess, though, and not the result of some scientific analysis.
- sarosh 19y agoI was a bit hesitant about the information provided, but the data is from a survey conducted by Millward Brown and it includes both an explanation of the methodology and a survey example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millward_Brown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millward_Brown http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/ http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/ http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/survey/npd_survey/ http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/survey/npd_survey/
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- srini 19y agoOur site's user base is heavily female and tech level is a bit above-average. It's a wedding related site, so it's definitely not the "web 2.0" crowd. According to google analytics, we see: flash: 90% 9.0 or better java: 99.9% have some java capability javascript: not sure Just for reference: os split: 87% windows, 12% mac, 1% other browsers: 68% ie, 24% firefox, 7% safari, 1% other ie split: 55% ie 7, 45% ie 6
- edw519 19y agoI used to worry about this until I just decided to not worry about it anymore. Don't have an answer for you, but I'd venture to guess that both numbers are +90% by now. At what point do you just bite the bullet and say, "I'm going to require js to run my app and if they don't have it, oh well."
- s3graham 19y agoThanks all, looks like I should probably go with Flash to get a little higher %. Will have to balance that against its general suckage and see what I can come up with.
- boucher 19y agoI would highly recommend using JavaScript unless you have a compelling reason (of which there are several) to use Flash. Often times using flash it like using a sledgehammer to put a picture up on your wall. You might just end up with a big whole in the wall.