Discuss
Topics
I've been having some problems getting the W3Counter tracker script to work properly when serving pages with the proper XHTML content type, and I wondered if maybe there is an "official" version of the tracker.js somewhere that does not use document.write? I tried to just modify the script to use createElement[NS] instead (see my blog entry about this) but I'm not sure this is working correctly because I see things like this in the report now:
Source: Google Search: make software ap with rtl8185
HowTo: Use The New RTL-8185 Driver With Hardy
viewed for 0 seconds
http://willdaniels.co.uk/articles/howto-guides/15-rtl8180-hardy
currently viewing
(these are the same page, yet I get both the URL address and the page title as 2 separate page views from a single page load).
Also, before I removed the pWidget loader stuff it was causing whole duplicate headings with the same Visitor-Browser-OS-Country on each visit. So I figure before I spend any more time on this I should probably ask here if somebody has already figured out how to get this working properly in XHTML, and hopefully save myself the trouble?
Any info/suggestions appreciated. Thanks!
Ah, no matter, I found my answer here [1]:
"In HTML, if scripting is enabled, the noscript element is parsed as an CDATA element. If scripting is disabled, it's parsed as a normal element. In XHTML, the element is always parsed as a normal element, and can't really be used to stop content from being present when script is disabled."
It seems that the tracker image from the <noscript> tag gets fetched regardless with XHTML, hence the duplicates, one with the proper page title and one without. The difference between the duplicates that got displayed under the same visit heading and those which created two separate ones I think was in the case of a referrer being present in the javascript data, which would not be present in the data submitted via the <noscript> image, causing the two hits to be grouped separately (I think).
Anyway, perhaps there is still some use to noting the issue here, because I can't immediately think of an alternative to provide the same limited tracking when scripting is disabled, unless W3Counter implements some better mechanism to avoid recording such duplication.
I was very impressed with W3Counter initially, but I have to say that I would hesitate to recommend or buy a subscription to the service without stronger support for progressive industry standards.
