Comments on: Analytical Breakdowns

By: Tanner Christensen

Tanner Christensen — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:32:05 +0000

What a great look at the process behind the survey results; thank you Eric.

The entire time I was reading about your graphing troubles I was thinking to myself “Numbers. Try Numbers.” and “Numbers can make it beautiful.” But then I read those three little words and almost cried… “immediately broke it.”

I’m surprised the premier Apple spreadsheet app can’t handle an entire boat full of data. But, I guess not very many applications could.

It’s good to see you did find some use for my favorite little iWork app though.

The results are beautiful, and your hard work (especially sitting for countless hours while the file saved) is greatly apprecaited.

By: a work on process » Web Design Survey findings

a work on process » Web Design Survey findings — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:36:57 +0000

[...] note that the A List Apart Web Design Survey findings have now been published. Eric Meyer has some notes about the analysis process which are worth a look for anyone who may find themself managing [...]

By: Jason Santa Maria

Jason Santa Maria — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:04:16 +0000

@Travis Fleck – I explored Illustrator early on for graph creation and found it fairly anemic. Illustrator can do graphs, but it’s certainly not what it does best. The actual problem is that EVERYTHING is editable. It treats each graph as a collection of many shapes and text fields, meaning that editing and resizing can be a big pain. Numbers understands what a graph is and makes it ridiculously simple to edit and alter them, while maintaining a good relationship between the graphic elements. This makes resizing and editing a snap. Minus a few odd quirks, it actually work out very well for graph creation.

By: Travis Fleck

Travis Fleck — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:24:47 +0000

@Eric - I didn't see mention of trying to create the tables automatically in Illustrator. I'm not sure if you considered this but you wouldn't have to draw out each individually. Illustrator can create certain types of graphs based on a data set. It would allow much more flexibility in the design elements that could be modified after the graph was created. Illustrator Graphs CS3

By: Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : Faster, pussycat

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : Faster, pussycat — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:35:26 +0000

[...] Eric Meyer, the survey’s co-author and co-sponsor, has written nice pieces about practical problems overcome in the survey’s creation, and how to keep probing the data for new answers and new [...]

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:12:02 +0000

It turns out my text-editing slowness problems were caused by having the text soft-wrapped. I didn’t realize it would cause that much of a performance hit. So, my bad!

By: Jon Cram

Jon Cram — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:57:56 +0000

I recently worked on parsing data out of 150MB text files, producing CSV files around 90MB in size.

I found TextPad good for opening the raw text files, and for viewing the CSV files ‘directly’ – perhaps around 10 seconds for a 150MB text file on a not-too-fancy middle-aged work-supplied laptop.

And, yes, doing anything in Excel with large files is a pain – try playing around with a 90MB CSV file without remembering to turn autosave off …

By: tyHATCH/ Notebook » Blog Archive » Eric Meyer on the 2007 Web Design Survey

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:43:57 +0000

[...] Meyer has posted about his involvement in putting together the 2007 Web Design Survey. Thanks [...]

By: prisca

prisca — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:27:34 +0000

Eric,
thanks to you and the ALA team for all your work on this – should prove an interesting read ;)

By: skierpage

skierpage — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:27:50 +0000

I loaded a 23MB file into gvim in less than 2 seconds. And it’s free open source (vim.org). And there are vim scripts for working with CSV files. gvim is mostly WYSIWYG, but for all the power you need to learn vi/vim.

By: All your blogs…

All your blogs… — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:18:25 +0000

[...] Eric Meyer reports that the results are available from the 2007 Web Design Survey: Analytical Breakdowns. [...]

By: Lydia Mann

Lydia Mann — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:20:27 +0000

Kudos, Eric. I am repeating here my comment from the survey discussion on ALA:

Fascinating, and a bit overwhelming. I am no statistician, but after reading the survey results I feel rectified in my position that the lack of diversity in conference line-ups merely represents the field in general. Since that is what got this whole thing going (see http://www.kottke.org/07/02/gender-diversity-at-web-conferences) I hope facts will ease perception of gender and racial injustice among conference presenters. As with most inequality, education is key. There are initiatives to bring design education to grades K-12 in wide-ranging communities (see http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/education, for example). Though we may not see a tidal shift in our generation, conference speakers will likely be a more varied lot in the future. Good work, A List Apart. this was a huge and valuable endeavor and I look forward to future surveys.

By: Web Design Survey Results Released | NerdStarGamer

Web Design Survey Results Released | NerdStarGamer — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:03:56 +0000

[...] Eric Meyer has written in-depth about the process of collecting the data and creating the report. Definitely read this post after [...]

By: bruce

bruce — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:47:00 +0000

I’m very, very frustrated by this survey. All this data on people who make web sites, and nowhere does it tell me who is best at it.

By: Kees

Kees — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:47:31 +0000

Thanks for the quick reply on Jason’s site – after reading your post I found out that you guys struggled just as much as I normally do – pretty interesting :) Next time, if you need help, count me in!