W3Counter pWidget Rev 2

I just wrapped up testing the second revision W3Counter pWidget, the overlay that brings web stats right to your webpage, including W3Counter’s color-coded click overlay. It puts no extra burden on the webpage except a simple key listener until it’s activated by the user, loads data modularly on demand, and is completely cross-browser compatible (dragging and transparency thanks to the awesome X Library).

It works flawlessly in IE6 and 7, Firefox, Opera and Safari. It also alleviates some issues the click overlay has within W3Counter’s normal interface due to having to serve the webpage by proxy through the W3Counter domain. Since this widget is running on the actual site, it doesn’t have the cross-domain scripting restrictions browsers impose on the proxied version, so it can show the overlay on an even broader set of sites.

The appearance has also been tweaked to be easier to read, and the “Live View” tab given the feature upgrades the same report in W3Counter got, including browser and country icons, and showing a visitor’s label instead of IP address if it’s known.

Another step closer to being able to push this out to the live site. You can see it in action on any page of this blog by holding Shift+W for 3 seconds (try the homepage, as this post won’t have data since it’s a brand new page).

By the way, can anyone think of a better way to activate it that’s unlikely to interfere with normal webpage usage? All the convenient keyboard combos seem to be taken already in some browser or popular extension.