Google introduces “Browser Size” tool for webmasters
To help webmasters understand how everyone sees their websites, Google created a brand new tool called Browser Size, and its live today. Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it. If you’re a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience. We hope people will use this tool to make their websites better, in turn making the web better for everyone.
To make it work, just go to this page and enter your site URL there, then it will show you in percentage how many viewers see the website at different resolutions. The data is visually displayed and is easy to understand.
Google code blog has more details on this tool.
Thanks Mani for ” Browser Size “.
Difficulty in viewing page layout behind the metrics.
But what about centered pages? The overlay is not correct then.
Neat tool, but very useless unless they fix the “centered” pages issue.
seobasic, you can set the amount of transparency if you’re having difficulty viewing the page behind the metrics (click the little grayscale bar near the top)
Thought I’d mention something else, too – if you want to see what your site looks like at various browser sizes, use the Firefox Web Developer plugin, and use the little drop down in the button bar to change your browser to any of the most common sizes. Great tool which I use all the time, as a web designer / developer.
Dreamweaver has this feature built-in.
I suppose Google’s tool allows for flexibility in that it does away with the need to use any other software and the key thing it is online.
Google browser tool isn,t working. Anyone have tried?
yep..it was working fine till yesterday..today not working
Hope they fix it soon..
It’s working now (6 January 2010), but i think that, as someone mentioned before, the issue with centered layouts is still present. Also the same problem with fluid layout’s.
I also use the Firefox Web Developer plugin. It’s good because you can even define your own custom screen dimensions. The only negative side is that you can only see how Firefox parses it.
I would be good to change screen size and see the results as IE6 or IE7 or other.