Custom Reports

How wide should I design my website? If I use the latest version of Flash to build a page, will visitors to my site be able to view it? If I build a JavaScript application for my site, will visitors be able to use it?

With just six lines of code that you can copy from below and paste onto your home page, you can get answers to these questions. You can learn:

1. The screen resolution of the monitors that visitors to your site are using.
2. Whether visitors have Flash installed, and if so, what version.
3. Whether visitors have JavaScript turned on, and if so, what version.

This information can help you design and build your site in a way that is fully accessible to the majority of your visitors.

Just like the other statistics, these custom reports are available only to departments that publish on www.bu.edu.

Statistics on visitors to the BU home page

We already collect these statistics on the 1.5 million visitors that come to the BU home page each month. The figures below are for January 2004.

Screen Resolution	61% (1024 x 768) 21% (800 x 600) 18% (other)
Flash Installed	97.3% (some version) 92.1% (version 6)   2.7% (no version)
JavaScript	78% (on) 22% (off)

This information can certainly help you in planning major revisions to your website. You can view the full report for the BU home page.

Collecting statistics on visitors to your site

To begin collecting these statistics specifically for your site, just follow these two quick and easy steps.

Step 1: Add code to your home page

Include the following code in your home page (the HTML file), just before the closing </body> tag. Just copy and paste the six lines of code below.

<!-- BEGIN browser spec code -->
<img src="/home/browserSpecs/image.gif">
<!--#include virtual="/home/browserSpecs/flashVersion.inc" -->
<!--#include virtual="/home/browserSpecs/resolution.inc" -->
<!--#include virtual="/home/browserSpecs/colorDepth.inc" -->
<!--#include virtual="/home/browserSpecs/javascriptVersion.inc" -->
<!-- END browser spec code -->

Again, add this code only to your home page. Most visitors to your site come through that page and the amount of traffic is sufficiently high to generate good statistics.

Step 2: Request that we process and report your statistics

Once you've completed Step 1, you can request custom statistics. We will add your site to the list of sites that receive custom reports. These new reports will be part of your normal site reports, which we generate on the third of each month. You will see a new section near the bottom of your navigation frame labeled Custom Reports, with links to the Resolution, Flash, and JavaScript reports. These reports will first appear in your next monthly report at the usual URL:

http://www.bu.edu/reports/your-dept-directory-name/

where your-dept-directory-name is admissions, cfa, law, alumni, etc.

Note: There are hundreds of screen resolutions in use today. That report will be lengthy.