We use the Web every day, all day long here. And we build Web sites. Since our ultimate goal is to create a Web site that we would want to use, we feel pretty connected with our audience.
Still, we knew we needed help when we first sat down to rethink what our site should offer. How could it better serve the developer community? What were we overlooking?
After culling countless Threads and email, we saw a pattern emerging. People who build Web sites found our columns and commentary informative and entertaining, but they needed more. They wanted a well-organized and comprehensive library of developer resources they could turn to whenever they needed it.
Interestingly, we had a library like this all along, in the collected archives of our content. It was just difficult to find. We decided to reorganize all of our past content and group it by subject rather than column.
To guide us in this, we asked you, our readers, which developer resources were most important to you. We talked to other webmonkeys, and debated internally, then capped the discussion with a user survey (which you can still see online) that asked the basic questions. The results directly influenced the list of subjects you see in the current navigation.
Finally, when it came time to lay down the basic architecture of the site, we analyzed our browser usage statistics. Not surprisingly, we found our audience to be out ahead of the curve in new browser adoption. Nearly 50 percent of this site audience has already upgraded to a 4.0 version browser, enabling us to be more liberal in our dependence on newer Web technologies. One of the most obvious manifestations of that choice is the dynamic HTML navigation system, which Taylor built for us and wrote about this week.
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