Client and Server side stats and detection

2 posts below from the Project Management forum which could be useful for Technology
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It never ceases to amaze me how often people need reliable statistics on web users’ browsers, monitor colour depths, screen resolutions and operating systems, and yet how difficult it is to get this information.

There is a site which reliably provides such statistics at Statmarket.com (http://www.statmarket.com/ ) but whereas this was once free to access (and spread like wild fire as an indispensable bookmark amongst the web design industry globally), you now have to pay to access the data.

Another site that is used as a source for such information is the Browserwatch section of Internet.com at http://browserwatch.internet.com/stats.html . However, as the site itself explains “this is a representation of browser usage for people who visit BrowserWatch, nothing more, nothing less. But let me tell you a little bit more about the users who frequent BrowserWatch, we have some of the top software developers, web site designers, magazine and newspaper editors and writers and a catch all group I like to call browser.nuts. These are the folks that feel the need to be using the latest and greatest browsers available - period, end of sentence.” This is fine if this is your site’s target market but pretty useless otherwise.

I was recently happy to discover another source of free information which does most of what Statmarket does. It is the WebSnapshot section of the MyComputer.com network which can be found at http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/ There is a really useful monthly report which you can download as a one page PDF which gives you all the key stats at a glance. You still have to pay for historical data (there is a historical data pricing list at http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/pricing_info.html ) but it is not that expensive at around $40 a shot. Details of the data sources for the stats can be found at http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/datasources.html (“data published by WebSnapshot is compiled from millions of visitors to tens of thousands of web sites of all types and sizes…”).

What I would really like access to, however, is this kind of information but such that it can be sliced and diced by a) Global / Country views b) different target market views. Sites should be designed with the target market in mind and the quality (let alone quantity) of data available to aid web designers is very poor. Surely there is a market here for someone? The most obvious people to provide such data are the big online advertising networks as their ad servers will get stats across a huge range of sites and users which can then be easily categorised. No doubt there are legal issues involved…

Anyone else know of other good sites for usage and penetration figures on browsers, monitor colour depths, screen resolutions and operating systems?

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Following on from the stats post, here are a few very valuable related resources:

1. Cyscape
http://www.cyscape.com/
Company description as follows:
"Founded in 1994, cyScape is the worldwide leader in tools and technologies for browser compatibility. Today industry leaders widely recognize cyScape as the best source for browser compatibility and capability information, with thousands of developers in over 35 countries using its solutions.

As internet technology continues to evolve, cyScape remains highly focused on and committed to tools and technologies for the rapidly emerging web developer requirement."

Most useful is the online tool at http://www.cyscape.com/showbrow.asp which will tell you everything you could want to know about your browser and its configuration as well IP / domain address details and connection speeds.

2. Netcraft
http://www.netcraft.com/
Whereas Cyberscape tells you about your browser, this site will tell you all you need to know about a site's server set up. Just enter the URL and you can get details on uptime, operating system, web server, IP address etc. Even better, you can see these details plotted over time in most cases.