Hello.

Why the counter image is put into the noscript tag? Is it because the php file that generates the image gathers the stats in case the browser doesn't support (or is blocking) client-side scripts?

If so, then how to display the counter image for visitors that have client-side scripting enabled?

just to clarify - I mean the W3Counter statistics code that one has to put into his/her website code in order to collect the stats.

So, anybody knows?

That is correct, the portion in the noscript tags collects limited stats from browsers with JavaScript disabled. The portion of the script not enclosed by noscript tags collects statistics from everyone else and displays the counter image.