Ask YC: Reliable data on JS/Flash availability?

[s3graham]

Wondering if people can point me to decent data on percentages of users who have JS or Flash available and enabled (by default, i.e. without asking them to download or prompt to turn on, etc.).

Driven by the webmail apps for JS and youtube for Flash, I feel like "most" people have them enabled, but I'd like to have some data to go on, especially if it appears one or the other is more available.

If you have your own data to offer, please indicate at least in broad strokes your type of users or the technical level you feel your users have.

[boucher]

According to Adobe, flash has the following penetration:

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers...

Of course, whether or not you should trust this 100% is up to you. My suspicious self would venture to guess Adobe tries to quantify the total number of users who have installed flash at some point, rather than those who have it currently enabled. I have no idea, though, if there's a big difference in those two metrics.

Much less scientifically, I would guess that anyone who has flash enabled, also has javascript enabled. Flash has more security implications, so I'm guessing most people concerned enough to disable javascript would have also disabled flash. Since javascript is also an included feature in essentially every browser flash has a plugin for (and some it does not), its "adoption rate" should then be at least as high. This is just an educated guess, though, and not the result of some scientific analysis.

[sarosh → boucher]

I was a bit hesitant about the information provided, but the data is from a survey conducted by Millward Brown and it includes both an explanation of the methodology and a survey example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millward_Brown

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/

http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/survey/npd_survey/

[srini]

Our site's user base is heavily female and tech level is a bit above-average. It's a wedding related site, so it's definitely not the "web 2.0" crowd.

According to google analytics, we see:

flash: 90% 9.0 or better

java: 99.9% have some java capability

javascript: not sure

Just for reference:

os split: 87% windows, 12% mac, 1% other

browsers: 68% ie, 24% firefox, 7% safari, 1% other

ie split: 55% ie 7, 45% ie 6

[edw519]

I used to worry about this until I just decided to not worry about it anymore. Don't have an answer for you, but I'd venture to guess that both numbers are +90% by now. At what point do you just bite the bullet and say, "I'm going to require js to run my app and if they don't have it, oh well."

[nextmoveone]

Little outdated but (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)

Also, based on analytics from our sites:

Approx 86% of our visitors have javascript enabled

Approx 100% of our visitors have flash enabled

interesting sidenote: 0% of our visitors that user firefox convert.

[eusman → nextmoveone]

w3schools stats are wrong because its obvious that the audience is more technically sophisticated, thus more probably they are using Fx and have JS disabled.

real numbers are 78-80% for IE(6 and 7), 14-16% for Firefox

and it depends on country too

[axod → eusman]

I don't see a correlation between disabling JS and tech level personally. Perhaps people who think they are technically sophisticated disable JS...

[eusman → axod]

i agree, that would be more precise way to say it

[s3graham]

Thanks all, looks like I should probably go with Flash to get a little higher %. Will have to balance that against its general suckage and see what I can come up with.

[boucher → s3graham]

I would highly recommend using JavaScript unless you have a compelling reason (of which there are several) to use Flash.

Often times using flash it like using a sledgehammer to put a picture up on your wall. You might just end up with a big whole in the wall.