Friday, June 12, 2009

MySql Text Field - Truncating Data?

Every now and then you run an application that really tests the constraints of data types. I just encountered this....

I just found out that in MySql "BLOB TEXT A BLOB or TEXT column have a maximum length of 65535 (2^16 - 1) characters". I was encountering some data errors with large text chunks - and finally found that they were being truncated silently... When I counted the characters - yes... that was the issue.

Arggg!

But there is a simple solution... LONGTEXT or LONGBLOB fields can handle the larger bits of data - if this is expected. This gives you approx 4 Gig of space to work with. Good to know.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Standard Web Page Width

I have been building web pages for over 6 years... and have been using a standard web page width of 778px for 800px monitors, unless the client requests otherwise. The concept is to avoid (left/right) scrolling and make a good user experience.

Most of the justification came from the analysis/tips in Jakob Nielson's book on "Homepage Usability" - dated in 2002. Most other articles I've read suggest this... but the trend is changing, as these monitors become fewer.

Floating widths are cool - and useful. But they take longer to develop and I only do those on request, at an extra fee. However, since my statistics show that less than 2% use 800 px monitors, I am about to change my policy...

But what width to use? Of course I will build for the 1024px monitors... the next size up. This is the largest percentage for screen resolutions now - about 34%. But I am considering only using 960px width for the regular content. That will allow for those who don't open their browser all the way. And it will allow the background colors/gradients to properly frame the page.

More info:
http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesign/a/aa080904.htm

http://funbytebitstop.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/775-px-make-it-your-default-webpage-width/

http://www.jimdegerstrom.com/blog/2008/07/standard-web-design-page-width.html

Screen Resolution Statistics
One of my websites gets 7,500 visitors per month on average...
21% use screen resolution 1024x768
18% use 1280x800
10% use 1280x1024
10% use 1440x900
7.6% use 1366x768
7% use 1680x1050
3.4% use 1920x1080
3% use 1920x1200
2.8% use 1600x900
2.25% use 1152x864
1.6% use 1280x768
1.5% use 1280x720
1.25% use 1360x768
0.9% use 800x600
0.9% use 1280x960
....

So it seems that less than 1 in 100 use the smaller 800 X 600 monitors...
Any thoughts?