Information Providers/HTML Authors Bulleted List

Non-Webmasters Who Can Publish Documents Easily

• For this question, users who do not operate a server (i.e., are not Webmasters) were asked if they could easily add documents to their organization's Web.

• The majority of non-Webmasters who have access to the Web can also add documents to it (82.68%).

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• There were no significant differences between genders.

• In the Third survey, however, there was some difference between genders with 85.83% of males having access to a server compared to 81.03% of females.

Policy and Charging for Advertising on Web sites

• The majority of users replied that they "Don't Allow Ads" (78.88%).

• For those that do allow ads, the largest percentage (11.68%) charge under $50 per week. Only 2.10% charge over $510 per week.

• In general, more servers are allowing ads across all price ranges when compared to the Third survey.

• There was no significant difference between Europe and US users.

• There was no significant difference between Weekday and Weekend users.

Hours Spent Learning Basis of HTML

• Most users (79.4%) spent between 1 and 6 hours learning HTML. Many users learned HTML in only 1 to 3 hours (50.7%). These numbers are slightly lower than the Third survey where 82.00% of users learned HTML in less than 6 ours and 55.2% in less than 3 hours.

• Users in Europe report spending less time learning HTML than users in the US (82.87% vs. 79.13% spending less than 6 hours).

• There are no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• Females report spending more time learning basic HTML than males (77.34% vs. 80.39% spending less than 6 hours).

Languages Used for CGI Programming

• This is a new question to the Fourth Survey. The idea here is to try to gain a better understanding in who is using what languages for CGI programming.

• The majority of people who develop CGI applications use Perl (46.7%), followed by C (12.5%), C++ (9.5%), and shell scripts (8.1%).

• Users in Europe were less likely to use Perl (43.7% Europe vs 47.8% US), and more likely to use either C (14.8% Europe vs 11.9% US), shell scripts (12.5% Europe vs 7.5% US), and OLE (8.0% Europe vs 0.3% US).

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users, though Weekend users reported using Apple Script more than their Weeday counterparts (8.9% Weekend vs 6.0% Weekday).

• Women CGI programmers reported using Perl (50.3% women vs 46.1% men) and "other" languages (12.7% women vs 7.8% men). Men reported using more C than women (13.2% vs 8.1%) and shell scripts (8.6% vs 5.2%). There were no significant differences between gender for the other languages.

Overall Learning of HTML and Specific HTML Features

• For this question, users were asked to rate the difficulty of learning HTML overall and some specific features of HTML (CGI, FORMS, and ISMAP) on a scale of 1 to 9.

• CGI was rated the most difficult (5.157) followed by FORMS (3.805), ISMAP (3.569), and HTML overall (2.442). Interestingly, none of these averages are near the maximum difficulty rating of 9.0. These ratings are nearly identical to those in the Third survey.

• Users in Europe ranked each category slightly less difficult than users in the US did.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• Females rated each category slightly more difficult to learn that males did. The category that showed the most difference was CGI (5.076 for males vs. 5.692 for females) which was also ranked the most difficult overall.

Types of HyperLinks Documents Contain

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• The most common type of link is to other WWW documents, with 93.58% of users including them in their documents. The next most common are images and "other" links, with 85.77% and 64.94% of users including them, respectively.

• Links to other kinds of servers (FTP, Gopher, etc.) were down compared to the Third survey, while the number of interactive links is rising.

• The least popular are ISINDEX (10.92%) and WWW servers (19.77%).

• More European users report using links to FTP sites (4.88% more), FORMS (6.39% more), images (4.81% more), interactive links (8.22% more), and "other" links (8.77%) than US users.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• Across almost all categories, fewer females reported using each kind of link in their documents. The categories with the greatest difference were: "other" links (67.76% males, 50.73% females) and interactive links (44.02% males, 32.85% females).

• Slightly more females than males (2.83%) reported using Gopher links.

How Many People Documents Maintained For

• The largest category of users maintain documents for 1 to 10 people (35.95%) and the next largest was for over 100 people (24.11%).

• Fewer Webmasters in Europe maintain pages only for themselves (5.24% Europe, 12.16% US).

• On the average, Weekend users maintain documents for slightly more people than do Weekday users.

• A higher percentage of females maintain pages for over 50 people than do males (33.48% females, 30.40% males). Also, more females report maintaining pages only for themselves (13.73% female, 11.19% male).

Mirroring of Other WWW Sites

• Most servers do not mirror other sites (88.82%). In the Third survey, 91.45% did not mirror.

• Slightly more Weekend users mirror other servers (3.09% more).

• Slightly more female users mirror other servers (4.44% more).

Number of Documents Authored

• "Authored" in this question means created using HTML directly. Another question covers the number of documents converted to HTML from some other format. (See Converted.)

• The most common number of documents authored is 1 to 10 (35.36%) followed by 11 to 50 (30.09%). Only 15.72% of users report authoring over 100 documents.

• On average, users in Europe have authored more documents than users in the US. 35.25% have authored over 51 documents while only 25.90% of US respondents have authored this many.

• Slightly more Weekend users reported never having authored HTML than did Weekday users (9.24% Weekend, 7.23% Weekday).

• On average, females have authored fewer documents than males.

Number of Documents Converted

• This question refers only to documents which were not created in HTML, but were converted to HTML by some automated process (e.g., Webmaker, RTF2html). Another question deals with documents written in HTML directly. (See Authored).

• Overall, 53.47% of users have never converted a document to HTML and another 29.09% have converted less than 10. Only 4.57% have converted over 100 documents.

• More users in Europe have converted over 100 documents (9.12%) than have users in the US (3.89%).

• Slightly more Weekend users reported never having converted documents to HTML.(52.97% Weekday, 55.21% Weekend)

• Slightly more female users reported never having converted documents to HTML.(52.72% male, 58.04% female)

Authors Who Operate WWW Servers

• This question was asked only to those who said they have authored Web documents.

• More than a third of the users who have authored HTML also report operating a server (37.79%). This percentage is lower than in the Third survey, where 46.02% of users operated servers.

• A higher percentage of users in Europe operate a server than do users in the US (52.24% vs. 47.76%).

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

Number of Years Programming

• Overall, 58.51% of users have been programming for less than 7 years and 41.49% for more than 7 years. 20.21% had no programming experience, and nearly the same number (20.45%) had over 12 years experience.

• In the Third survey, only 16.76% of users had no programming experience.

• European users, in general, have more programming experience with 56.00% having more than 7 years compared to 40.47% in the US.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• A high percentage (43.08%) of females report having no programming experience. This percentage is up since the Third survey (35.68%).

• As the number of programming years increases across the categories, the number of females steadily decreases.

• The number of males in each category is relatively constant.

Operation of Proxies

• Only a small percentage of users (16.72%) operate a proxy server which is still up 4.09% from the Third survey.

• A much higher percentage of European users operate a server than do American users (30.34% vs. 13.80%).

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• There were no significant differences between genders.

Sources Consulted in Learning HTML

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• On-line documentation was consulted by 83.92% of users in learning HTML. The next two most popular sources, books and friends, were consulted by only 44.47% and 29.02% of users, respectively.

• Even more users in Europe use on-line documentation (89.09%) and even fewer use books (33.27%) or friends (25.22%).

• The use of books has risen noticeably since the Third survey, from 29.24% to 44.47% overall. The rise was even more pronounced for Europeans (up 15.78%) and females (up 16.99%).

• Fewer Weekend users consulted friends (24.54%) and gurus (17.31%) than did Weekday users (30.32% friends, 21.00% gurus).

• More females consult books (9.17% more), friends (6.86% more), and gurus (12.06% more) than do males.

• Females consult on-line documentation less frequently than do males (5.88% less).

Speed of Server Connection to Internet

• The most common server connection speed is 10 Mb/sec (38.94%). The next most common are 1 Mb/sec with 12.88% and 56 Kb/sec with 11.08%.

• There were no significant differences for Weekend and Weekday users.

• More females than males (27.04% vs. 5.27%) were unsure of their connection speed.

Topics of Documents Authored

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• By far, the most popular topics for pages are work-related (75.04%) and personal pages (73.23%). The least popular topics are conferences (11.6%) and sports (7.47%).

• Percentages in almost all areas increased or stayed the same compared to the Third survey. The exceptions were Meta-indices (down 6.06%), research (down 3.37%) and personal pages (down 1.91%).

• More European users author research pages than do US users (39.53% vs. 30.44%, respectively).

• Slightly fewer Weekend users have authored pages on work and research.

• For most categories, there are fewer female authors than males. Those with the greatest differences are: personal pages (64.45% vs. 75.51%), entertainment pages (29.47% vs. 38.16%), and indices (12.71% vs. 20.27%).

Which Server Currently Used

• Overall, the most popular server is NCSA's (28.46%) followed by Netsite (17.72%). CERN's (18.46%) and "other" (11.38%) tie for third. Though, if you combine MacHTTP (5.59%) with its new commercial spin-off WebStar (5.79%), this servers ranks fourth at 11.38%. In the Third survey, MacHTTP ranked second at 20.79%

• In Europe, however, CERN's (23.97%) is nearly tied with NCSA's (24.72%) as the most popular server. This is a noticeable change from the Third survey where CERN's server had 34.88% compared to NCSA's 28.11%.

• An accidental omission occurred in the compilation of the below numbers, whi ch excluded winHTTP from the analysis. The number of users who report using win HTTP is: 3 female; 52 male; 8 Europe; 38 USA; 14 weekend; and 43 weekday - resul ting in 57 overall users of winHTTP. The bottom line is that the below percentag es are correct, but will not add to 100% unless the winHTTP numbers are included .

• More Weekend users than Weekday users run something other than NCSA's server or Netsite.

• More females operate Netsite servers than males (24.89% vs. 16.46%) while fewer run NCSA's server (22.23% vs. 29.68%).