Web browser usability



A survey on web browser usability

Abstract

Web browsers are the most used tool to retrieve web contents, though the features might be similar among different browsers, the interfaces are different. Further, more users are accessing the internet using the browsers. It is important to study the usability of the browsers because unusable browsers can distort any websites and make web information retrieval inconvenient. This study conducted an online survey on the usability of the web browser. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis is conducted on the data. Data is being analyzed from gender and age perspectives as well as general usage of the browsers.

1. Introduction (importance and motivation)

With advanced technology, personal computers are getting cheaper. More people are using computers and have more chances to access the internet[1]. More and more information are being put on the internet; and information can be accessed whenever and wherever. The most common and important way to view the information of World Wide Web (WWW) is using the browser[2]. The browser has been evolved from very limited browser-editor[3] to various types and multiple functions since 1999. The users of the browser are not only computer experts but also any person. Though, browser is ‘only a tool’ to help retrieve information and display information in a human acceptable format, it can help people saving time and effort from doing searching online, even saving money when shopping online. The browser is a digital window for user to see the digital world.

The WWW is displayed differently on different browsers due to browser compatibility issues. More over, the diversified nature of human being has different ways in how to use the browser. The ubiquitous computing makes user using browsers everywhere in any possible formats from handheld devices to luxury in house big screens. It would be very hard to say that one browser fits everybody; therefore it is worthy to discuss the usability issues of the browsers.

There are quite some studies focused on the web usability [4], such as how to optimally display content retrieved by browser[5], how to organize content to ease the navigation through web pages[6], even some modify browsers to plug in more functions to make browser more usable such as adaptive browser[7], bravo browser [8], hyperbolic tree browser [9], brain browser[10], semantic Magpie browser[11], 3d audio web browser[12], etc. Interestingly, there are not many studies that specially focus on the general usability of the web browser. As a fact, users browse “19.5 to 204.8 pages per active day” according to Weinreich et al’s study [6], therefore it is important to improve the usability of the browsers.

This study is designated to find out the general usability factors of the existing browsers. The rest of the article is organized like as following. In section 2, study methodology will be described in study instrument and participants in details. Results will be discussed in section 3. Discussion and conclusion will be provided in section 4 and 5 respectively.

2. Methodology

Since most people use browsers to retrieve internet content, an internet survey will be most suitable for the purpose of finding how users are using the web browsers. More over, subjects can fill the survey while using the browsers which can reduce the mental work [13].

2.1. The web browser models

In this section, the survey questions will be explained in details. The survey questions are based on several browser architecture models [14], [15], [16]. Larrondo-Petrie et al. [14] built the feature tree based on the common features provided by different browsers. Navigation interface features such as home, back, forward, go to, etc. and bookmark features etc. are included in the feature tree. Rees believed that the web card model would be implemented for the browser [15]. Figure 1 shows the model. Sa-nga-ngam described the user’s mental model of the web browser which was constituted by title, menu, toolbar, web page and status bar five parts [16].

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Figure 1. web card user interface architecture from [15]

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Figure 2. users mental model of the web browser [16]

2.2. The browser usability survey

This survey has 20 questions in two sections. Section one is demographic questions. The questions for this part focused on gender, age, highest degree completed, number of years using the browser, number of hours per day using browser and proficiency of using browser as well. This survey want to find general usage of the browser, therefore the first thing is to find who the users are, that is why gender, age, highest degree are necessary. In Pitkow’s study[17] the income also is one of the important indicator of the user type. Since the subject for this survey mostly will be college students, the income will have little relationship with the personal usage of the browsers, therefore income is not considered here. The longer years of using browser will result in more experiences in using browsers; hence they will have more opinions on the browsers, and provide more valuable feedbacks. On the other hand, years of using browser does not necessarily end up in long period of time by using it every day. Hence, for users who have used browser for a short time, their opinions are still very valuable if they spend long time period using the browser everyday. Therefore hours per day on using the browser is a necessary question to balance the years of using browser.

It is very difficult to test the proficiency of using the browser objectively because there are so many different types of browsers. Secondly each browser has so many add on functions or features [18]. Thirdly there are so many different browser related tasks depending on how the task is defined and types of web content. For example, authors of [16],[19], [20], [21], etc defined their browser related tasks to meet different research objectives. In short, each user has their unique pattern of using the browsers, which is using certain browser and certain functions for certain ways. Further, Bernard et al argued that retrospective data on self-rating was valid [22], therefore it is better for the users to state their efficiency level of using the browsers.

The second section is general browser usage questions. They are listed as following.

• What browser(s) do you have experience with?

• Which browser(s) are you currently using?

• What is your primary browser if you have more than one browser on your system?

• What are the primary uses of your WWW browser?

• Please pick the web browser features that you would like to have?

• What is your screen size?

• How do you customize your web browser to improve the Internet experience? ( such as re-arrange the icons, managing tool bars, etc

• Usage of toolbars, namely what are the buttons should be displayed.

• Whether the toolbar should be visible or not.

• Whether the menu should be visible or not.

• How do you use the status bar?

• Please rate your skill level of using the web browser? (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

• Any suggestions for improving your browser in general?

Browser usage trend can be detected by asking the browsers that the users have experience with. It is highly possible that users have access to multiple computers that might have different browsers installed. The browser currently in use is not necessary the primary browser that the user in favor to use. For this reason, what is the current and primary browser is being asked. The choices of browsers are generated based on web browser statistics 2004 [23], 2005 [24]and 2007 [18]. The order is Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozillar, Netscape, Opera, Safari, etc.

According to Kellar[25], there are five task categories in order to achieve information goals. They are Factor finding (Looking for specific facts, files, or pieces of information, etc ) Information gathering (Collecting information, often from various sources, in order to make a decision, write a report, complete a project, etc) Browsing/Surfing the Web (Viewing web pages, with no specific goal in mind, often just for entertainment, etc) Transactions (email, banking, shopping, etc) and others ( the ones not in previous four category). After finishing the pilot study, we were suggested Entertainment (gaming, watching video, etc) can be as one category, therefore the choices for the primary usage of the web browsers are above six categories.

There are lots of features[14] for each browser, but not all the browsers have the same number of features. In order to reduce subjects’ mental work and keep subjects engaged in the survey, the listed items are chosen based on the importance in web navigation. They are Bookmark managing[26], [6], Search engine toolbar[16], Tabbed browsing [6, 27], Pop-up blocking [27], Page zooming [28] . This is an open-ended question, in case subjects want other features besides above ones.

It is difficult to navigate through the pages when the screen is small [29] which includes lots of scrolling and clicking, therefore the usability of the web browser will be effected by the screen size[30], [6].

To improve the internet experience of the users, adaptive web browsers[7] such as the ones that provide reading difficulty users with sound and pictures[31], or the ones that can enlarge fonts for elderly[32], etc are specially developed. The fact is such browsers are either very rare, or expensive or still being developing in lab, therefore it will be more realistic for users to customize the browsers themselves such as re-arranging the icons, managing tool bars etc. rather than purchasing special browsers. It is appropriate to ask users how they customize the browser in open ended question in order to know how they are using the browser.

There are many buttons can be displayed on the web browser toolbar for quick access functions or tasks. Besides that, different browser has certain different button labels. In order to catch this information, this question provides multiple choices and one open end to give user the freedom to fill in. Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh, Home, Search, History, RSS, Mail, Print, Copy, Cut, Past, Font Size and Full screen browser toolbar buttons are choosen based on the study of Catledge[33] , Tomori[10] and Zhao[26].

It is interesting to know whether users want to hide the toolbar or menu in case to get best visual effects of the web content, therefore questions on visibility of the toolbar and menu are asked. Those questions are open ended.

The very last part of the browser interface is the status bar according to the model. Open ended question “How do users use the status bar” is asked.

There are two very similar questions in the survey which are the Cronbach alpha questions for testing the consistency of the data collected. It used the 1 to 10 scale to indicate the different levels of browser using skill. Although those two questions are asking self-rating scores on the browser usage, as state before, it is an efficient way to gain the general ideas of what users’ experience of using browser would be.

The very last question is an open ended question on suggestions for improving the browser in general.

There are no mandatory questions in this survey. Participants have all the rights to answer or to skip the question. However, the participants still answered the questions very patiently, even for the open ended questions.

2.2. Participants

The survey was conducted online, as the participant group is consisted of user with browser experience. This allowed the researchers to broadly distribute the survey and reach a representative samples. An initial power analysis based on Thiemann and Kraemer [34] indicated that a sample size of about one hundred to one hundred and fifty participants would be adequate to measure the variables in the survey. The survey announcement was distributed via college e-mail groups and newsgroups, and data were collected on the online survey site . Participants are using the browsing while filling the survey about the browser. By this way, the users can provide more accurate information [22] because there is less time for the memory to decay. Further, participants can fill the survey at their pace instead of in a limited time period, which also can improve the response quality [13].

3. Results

There are 111 participants who filled the survey and 100 records are qualified to use after the cleanup.

3.1 demographic data

The average age of the participants is 32.4. There are 56 female and 43 males, as well as one participant is not willing to give the gender information. The average year for using the browser is 11.1. The average time for using the browser is 5.8 hours per day. The above data showed that browser was a very important tool in retrieving web content in their daily life. The average score for self-rated proficiency is 8.96, which means that the participants are very confident in using the browser. The overall demographic data showed that participants have been use the browser for years, and have confident browser experience. The demographic data are shown in table 1 in details.

|Age |Mean=32.4; Std. Dev=11.0 |

|Gender |Female=56; Male=43; unknown=1 |

|Occupation |Student=43 ; working in IT=41; working in education=14; null=2 |

|Highest degree |High school=27; bachelor=29; master=35; Ph. D=6; Associate=3 |

|Total years of using browser |Mean=11.1 ; Std. Dev=3.3; max=20; |

|Total time using browser daily|Mean=5.8; Std. Dev=2.9; max=12; min=0.5 |

|Proficiency |Mean=8.96; Std.Dev=1.19 |

Table1. Summary of participants demographics (N=100)

3.2 browser questions

Although previous online resource[24] showed that Microsoft IE has the largest market share which was true in the past as the data shown in chart1, the current most popular browser is FireFox. Microsoft IE and Safari are in second and third place respectively. The rank for primary browser is FireFox first, Microsoft IE second, and Netscape the third. This means IE is not the most favored browser anymore. There is a trend that more people are using FireFox because it is more “flexible” than IE. There were other browsers mentioned by the participants, such as mosaic, conqueror, amaya, etc. which shows the participants do use variety of browsers. From gender perspective, male participants are more likely to use FireFox as primary browser comparing to female participants though there is very slight higher chance that both gender are current using FireFox. See chart2 for details.

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Chart 1. browsers used in past, currently in use , and primary browsers

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Chart 2. browser used in past, currently in use and primary browsers for female and male category, in percentage.

According to [35], the interaction with browser can be categorized into four categories: fact finding, information gathering, browsing/surfing the web and transaction. This study confirms this categorization for usage of web browsers. 91% of the users use it for fact finding; 96% of the users use it for information gathering; 90% of the users use it for browsing/surfing the web and specifically 55% of the users use it for online entertainment; 93% of the users use it for online transactions. Besides above listed usages, a more general browsing usage also can be categorized after coding the text in the open-ended part. 13% of the users are using it for web work, such as web design, testing and development; 3 % of the users are using it for research which is in the category of fact finding; 6% of the users use it for personal communications, such as blogs, forums, discussion, RSS, etc.

|Fact finding --- Looking for specific facts, files, or pieces of information. |91 |

|Information gathering --- Collecting information, often from various sources, in |96 |

|order to make a decision, write a report, complete a project, etc. | |

|Browsing/Surfing the Web --- Viewing web pages, with no specific goal in mind, |90 |

|often just for entertainment, etc. | |

|Transactions --- email, banking, shopping, etc. |93 |

|Entertainment --- games, watching movies, etc. |55 |

| | |

|Work: web design, testing, development |13 |

|Research: |3 |

|Communication: email, blog, forums, RSS, discussion |6 |

Table 2. Primary reasons for using the browsers (total 100 participants)

For browser features, as shown in the chart3, the most desired feature is the ability of popup blocking ( 86%). The second favored feature is tabbed browsing as some participants state that ‘I cannot live without tabbed browsing’ (83%). The third one is search engine toolbar (73%). The forth one is bookmark management (72%). The fifth is auto-complete (46%). The sixth is page zooming (30%). Besides choosing the given options, 17 participants specified other features wanted, such as password management and protection, RSS feed, Open in new window or tab, Session management, accessibility, keyboard shortcuts, saving tab status when closing or crashing of machine, social networking book-marking, user profile transfer, navigational shortcuts, etc.

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Chart3. Browser features.

|mean |Mean for female |Mean for male |Mean for age (0-19)|Mean for age |Mean for age (45+) |

| | | | |(20-44) | |

|7.75 |7.40 |8.19 |4.82 |7.86 |9.33 |

|Size(inches) | ................
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