Total Kynosarges page views as determined by Google Analytics again shrank year-over-year, but a strong weblog performance prevented a massacre. Combined non-unique views went from 101,616 in 2017 (weblog 54,077, website 47,539) to 99,254 in 2018 (weblog 64,682, website 34,572). Here are the annual Top Ten pages, starting with weblog posts. Each link is followed by the original publishing date, total post views, and rounded change in views from 2017.
- Java SE 11: The Great Removal (September 2018, 8,774 views, new) This fairly mundane overview post really blew up after some popular user shared it on Reddit. (I first tried sharing it myself and was completely ignored…)
- DPI Settings in Windows 10 (September 2015, 4,391 views, –8,000) The long-expected huge drop for this totally obsolete post has finally happened.
- DPI Settings in Windows 10 Creators Update (April 2017, 3,283 views, –800) While not technically obsolete, the current DPI settings are good enough that no special advisory is needed anymore.
- JavaFX Pane Clipping (November 2016, 3,132 views, +1,500) Here come the JavaFX hits, most of them still growing in popularity.
- JavaFX Spinner for Numbers (October 2016, 3,094 views, +1,200)
- JavaFX Chart Coloring (May 2017, 2,838 views, +1,100)
- JavaFX DPI Scaling (August 2013, 2,833 views, –400) Expected losses for an obsolete post, only relevant to old JavaFX versions.
- JavaFX DPI Scaling in Java 9 (January 2018, 2,664 views, new) Another post on the same subject but relevant to current versions.
- 3DViewer: Better 3D for JavaFX (April 2018, 2,635 views, new) I was exploring 3D graphics in JavaFX for a while and discovered this very useful demo project.
- Windows GUI DPI Scaling in 2018 (March 2018, 2,437 views, new) The corresponding website page actually lost views in 2018, but this post also documents a JavaFX layout bug which is likely the reason for its odd popularity.
Java and specifically JavaFX continued as the main visitor attractions, which is probably a bad omen for my current plans of abandoning that technology in favor of Swing/AWT following the Great Removal. Oh well, I’m not here to make money.
On to my static website pages. As usual the Top Ten list excludes about 2,000 home page views, likely by curious weblog visitors. That the home page is now more popular than four top ten content pages is a rather embarrassing demonstration of website’s unchanged downward trend. More on that below.
- Java for C# Programmers (August 2013, 9,526 views, –1,760) A rather sizable loss. I continue to keep this page up-to-date for new Java versions but there haven’t been big language changes recently.
- High DPI Settings in Windows (May 2011, 3,804 views, –2,560) The article is obsolete as of Windows 10, as demonstrated by continuing heavy losses.
- Check .NET Version with Inno Setup (September 2012, 3,542 views, –150) Almost stable compared to last year, as I continue updating the script for new .NET Framework versions.
- WPF Drawing Performance (June 2011, 3,399 views, –470) Ongoing losses but fewer than expected. The page is old but to my knowledge still applicable to current WPF versions.
- Rise of Nations on Windows 8 (February 2013, 2,895 views, –3,800) Another huge loss as everyone who still wants to play this classic game can now just get the Steam version.
- DPI Scaling in Windows GUIs (May 2013, 2,766 views, –740) All GUI frameworks covered here now scale more or less correctly.
- Tektosyne Library for Java (September 2010, 834 views, –140) The Java port was quite popular but now that Tektosyne is also on the big code repositories, users no longer need to visit this home page.
- .NET Struct Performance (June 2011, 727 views, –220) Ongoing losses for an article that has likely been obsoleted by the new .NET Core VM.
- Hexkit Strategy Game System (March 2000, 535 views, –540) Hexkit is really quite ancient at this point. I do plan a Java port but that will take a long time…
- Developer Books (June 2002, 338 views, –40) Small losses from a low level. I now post book reviews on this blog, so most people read those rather than going through the review archive page.
Last year I speculated that the website might lose another 20,000 page views in 2018. With an actual 13,000 views lost, it wasn’t quite that bad but bad enough. The final Top Ten entry now has just over half the views of the one in previous years. While I’ll always keep up my project pages regardless of popularity, it’s probably time to delete some more of the really unpopular and outdated pages.
Random Fun Statistics
This section breaks down my visitors by traffic source, geographic location, and OS/browser combinations. Google Analytics recorded 21,792 sessions on the website and 43,011 on the weblog, for a combined total of 64,803 sessions (not accounting for overlap). First, here are all traffic sources down to DuckDuckGo, just because it’s my own default search engine. Sad to see it’s still rather irrelevant!
Google and poor little Bing also lost some share compared to 2017. This is partly because a series of popular Java(FX) posts increased eyeballs from technical aggregators, including newcomer Lobster, but also because the share of “(none)” sessions with tracking disabled grew dramatically from 20% to 28%. If this trend continues I soon won’t be able to make this table anymore.
| Source | Site | Blog | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 48% | 55% | 54% | |
| (none) | 37% | 22% | 28% |
| (self) | 6.1% | 1.5% | 3.1% |
| Bing | 2.2% | 3.4% | 3.0% |
| ~0% | 4.0% | 2.7% | |
| FxExperience | ~0% | 3.3% | 2.3% |
| 0.1% | 2.6% | 1.8% | |
| Hacker News | 0.3% | 1.1% | 0.9% |
| Lobster | ~0% | 1.3% | 0.9% |
| DuckDuckGo | 0.5% | 0.7% | 0.7% |
The next table shows visitor locations for all countries with at least 1% of total sessions. The distribution is more or less unchanged compared to 2017, with a few countries merely trading places. South Korea and Japan had an unusually strong showing, though.
| Country | Site | Blog | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 23% | 26% | 25.2% |
| Germany | 7.0% | 9.4% | 8.7% |
| UK | 4.8% | 4.9% | 4.9% |
| India | 4.7% | 3.9% | 4.2% |
| Canada | 3.1% | 3.7% | 3.5% |
| France | 2.2% | 3.3% | 3.0% |
| Russia | 3.2% | 2.6% | 2.8% |
| China | 5.2% | 1.7% | 2.8% |
| Poland | 2.4% | 2.9% | 2.7% |
| Italy | 2.0% | 2.2% | 2.2% |
| Australia | 1.7% | 2.0% | 1.9% |
| Netherlands | 1.6% | 2.0% | 1.9% |
| Brazil | 2.0% | 1.8% | 1.9% |
| South Korea | 2.9% | 1.2% | 1.8% |
| Japan | 2.6% | 1.3% | 1.8% |
| Spain | 1.3% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
| Sweden | 1.2% | 1.6% | 1.5% |
The final table shows all combinations of operating system and web browser with at least 1% of total sessions. Mobile grew strongly. The combined 15% for Android and iOS surpassed all-platform Firefox sessions, as well as those for both Microsoft browsers. The big OS-browser combinations on desktop lost not only to mobile, but also to their formerly less popular cousins: all Macintosh and Linux browsers as well as Windows Opera increased their shares.
Also, Microsoft Edge is going nowhere fast. Compared to 2017 it actually fell back again relative to Internet Explorer, matching its web-wide stagnation. You may have heard that Microsoft already capitulated on its proprietary browser engine and announced to rebase Edge on Chromium. Given Chrome’s continued dominance I suppose they had little choice.
| OS & Browser | Site | Blog | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows Chrome | 53% | 39% | 44% |
| Windows Firefox | 11% | 10% | 10.6% |
| Android Chrome | 5.9% | 11.4% | 9.6% |
| Macintosh Chrome | 3.6% | 6.7% | 5.6% |
| iOS Safari | 3.1% | 6.2% | 5.2% |
| Windows IE | 6.1% | 4.6% | 5.1% |
| Windows Edge | 5.6% | 4.8% | 5.1% |
| Linux Chrome | 2.5% | 4.5% | 3.8% |
| Linux Firefox | 1.3% | 3.4% | 2.7% |
| Macintosh Safari | 1.5% | 3.2% | 2.6% |
| Windows Opera | 1.5% | 1.2% | 1.3% |