MAMA: The "average" Web page
Introduction
This section will attempt to describe the construction of a typical Web page based on the statistics presented in the MAMA research. This is not meant to imply that ALL, or even most Web pages look like this; it is a composite view of features that a significant percentage of MAMA's URLs commonly exhibit—an "average" Web page in the literal sense. The barrier to entry on this list is each component having at least half of the overall MAMA URL set or a majority of the particular technology directly in use.
HTTP Headers
- Protocol: HTTP/1.1
- HTTP Header Fields Present:
Accept-Ranges
Connection
(value is "close")Content-Length
Content-Range
Content-Type
(charset
parameter not specified)Date
ETag
Last-Modified
Server
(value is an Apache variant)
The Page
- Document size: Main document is just over 16,400 characters
- Doctype: HTML 4.x transitional variant doctype is used, with a system identifier
- Rendering Mode: Quirks mode
- Document encoding: Specified using the
META
element, set to "iso-8859-1" - Tag ratio: Ratio of markup to non-markup content is 61.64%
- Basic markup structure:
HTML
,HEAD
andBODY
elements used;Bgcolor
attribute used onBODY
- Comments: About 12 on average; just over 2,250 characters
- Character entities: At least one, including non-breaking
space entity (
) - Technologies not used: BOM, Event-handler attributes, Forms, Frames, Plugins and XML
Markup validation
- Does not pass markup validation
- No fatal validator errors
- Validator warnings:
- "W06"—Unable to determine parse mode (XML/SGML)
- "W09"—No DOCTYPE found (Yes, this contradicts the doctype statement above.)
- Validation errors - 5, including:
- 108: There is no attribute X
- 127: Required attribute X not specified
Markup
HEAD
Section
- Elements used:
LINK
,META
,SCRIPT
,TITLE
LINK
element: 1-2 external stylesheets (Rel
attribute value is "Stylesheet",Type
attribute value is "text/css"); Total size: just under 8,500 characters; "style.css" is the most likely name of one of the external style sheets.META
elements: Contains 3META
statements:- 1 for search engine keywords (
Name
="keywords") - 1 for search engine description (
Name
="description") - 1 for setting the MIME type with
charset
parameter: "iso-8859-1" (Http-equiv
="Content-Type")
- 1 for search engine keywords (
SCRIPT
element: UsesLanguage
,Src
andType
attributes. Contains at least 2 Scripts:- External script - Typically 1, average: 2.5. Total size: just over 26,500 characters
- Embedded script - Typically 1, average: 3.6. Total size: just under 2,500 characters
BODY
Section
- Block level elements:
BR
elementDIV
andP
elements with theAlign
attributeDIV
element also usesId
andStyle
attributes
- Tables:
TABLE
,TR
, andTD
all used. Tables typically nested 3 levels deep. The following attributes are used:TABLE
:Border
,Cellpadding
,Cellspacing
TD
:Align
,Class
,Colspan
,Height
,Valign
,Width
- Phrase elements:
FONT
andB
element.FONT
has the following attributes:Color
: Using white, black or red colors specified with hex notationFace
: Value includes the "arial" fontSize
: Set toSize
="2"
- Images:
- 23 inline images (via
IMG
element) - 12 unique image URL references
- The images use the
Alt
,Border
,Height
,Width
andSrc
attributes - Image formats used are a mix of GIF and JPEG, with GIFs favored slightly
- 23 inline images (via
- Hyperlinks:
- 38 hyperlinks
- Uses the
Class
attribute - One or more links outside the document's domain
- One or more has
Target
attribute value set to "_blank" - One or more has event handler script attributes (
Onmouseover
and/orOnmouseout
)
CSS
- Inline CSS (
Style
attribute): Total size ~1000 characters - External CSS (
LINK
element):- 1-2 external style sheets used
- MIME type used is "text/css"
- Total size: just under 8,500 characters
- "style.css" is file name of one of the external style sheets
- Uses the
:hover
pseudo-class - CSS properties used:
Background-color
Color
Font-family
Font-size
Font-weight
Height
Text-align
Text-decoration
Width
Script
- External scripts: At least 1, avg: 2.5; Total size just over 26,500 characters
- Embedded scripts: At least 1, avg: 3.6; Total size just under 2,500 characters
- Event handlers: At least 1, avg: 19.2; Total size just under 1,000 characters
- External script MIME type: "application/x-javascript"
- JavaScript/ECMAScript keywords used:
- Basic language:
function
,if
,var
,new
,return
,else
,for
,true
,false
,null
- Global object methods:
escape
,eval
,parseInt
- Array object:
length
- String object:
indexOf
,length
,substring
- Basic language:
- DOM keywords used:
- Document object:
document.getElementById
,write
- Element object:
id
,innerHTML
- Event-related objects:
onload
,addEventListener
- Location object:
href
- Navigator object:
appName
,appVersion
,userAgent
- Window object:
window
,navigator
,location
- Document object:
- Other script keywords used:
Image
,height
,src
,width
- Script factors not used: Does not mention a browser; Does not use any recognized DHTML menus/libraries
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Comments
The forum archive of this article is still available on My Opera.