Just added: 2007-2008 FCAT results and school grades, 2008-2009 attendance zone maps

Just added to the 29 Palm Beach County public school pages included in the current version of Backyard Post: FCAT results and school grades for 2007-2008 and attendance zone maps for 2008-2009. Why only those 29 schools? Because we’re still in the testing and development phase. Among other things, that means our coverage is limited to incorporated West Palm Beach. Our 29 current schools either draw students from West Palm Beach or are magnet schools physically situated in the city. We have all the same data for the other 134 traditional public schools that the Palm Beach County school district will open this fall, but it’s going to be awhile before we switch them on, so to speak.

One other change so seemingly minor and incredibly microscopic that I’m including it here merely as a test of your dedication to following every little move made by the Backyard Post team: We finally started labeling school years with both calendar years that the school year spans instead of only the calendar year in which the school year began.

So that was pretty clear, right?

We used to label school years like this: 2007. Now we label it like this: 07-08. The old way confused everyone and even everything (plants, staplers and other inanimate objects) who/that ever saw it, including ourselves. Let’s just forget it ever happened, shall we? Seriously, just drop it already.

107 days of Backyard Post browser and operating system stats, for no particular reason

You know what we like here at Backyard Post headquarters? Stats. Stats and the FAIL Blog. And tea. Stats, the FAIL Blog and tea. So, for no particular reason, here is a chart showing which browsers were used by visitors to Backyard Post on each of the 107 days from April 1 to July 16:

The decline in Firefox’s percentage is probably due to the increasing number of more mainstream visitors arriving via search engines, as opposed to the early and nerdy crowd that swung by to leer at our sweet data and maps. Remember, we’re still very much in the no-local-promotion, behind-the-scenes development and testing phase, so almost everyone hitting the site today is a random Googler. That also explains this chart of operating system share during the same period:

Interested in the Internet Explorer version breakdown over the 107-day period? Lucky you:

And the Firefox version breakdown? Can you believe your luck:

Windows version detail? Coming right up:

We love it when a plan comes together

Remember how we said two weeks ago that Backyard Post had a minor bug in Firefox 3? How it wasn’t rendering parcels on our real estate maps in the green-yellow-red color scale we use to very generally represent sale prices? Well, never mind all that now. After hours of backbreaking work and just generally tireless mental and physical exertion, our parcels are now properly shaded in Firefox 3, and all is right and just in the world. It was a tough fight, but we just kept our heads down and managed to pull through.

OK, that’s not strictly true. What actually happened was this: We didn’t do anything and the maps just started working. As Hannibal would no doubt say in this situation, we love it when a cross-browser compatibility plan comes together.