Deciding Which Counter

This is an initial start to this page and it will expand into more depth on this subject, believe it or not there are several things you should consider before you decide on which counter is correct for your web page and/or right for you, there are quite a few different types to choose from and as always there are also multiple reasons for picking a particular type.

Not all counters are created equal!
This is primarily why we decided to build quite a few different types, a good instance here is Web TV™, say you wanted a counter to look good on your page and have counter statistics as well, a while back you could not have the best of both worlds because Web TV™ did NOT like Java, this has now changed and more and more Web TV™ terminals have Java installed!

So which counter do I use?
This is where it will take several pages to expand on this subject, at the time of writing we have two counters that can be put into categories, and for now we will list under these counters the advantages and disadvantages of both.

Graphical Counter
Our graphical counter produces and displays a Graphical image on your page, this is either a .gif or .png type image, this counter for now and in the future will display on almost any PC, Terminal, or operating system, the reason for this is these images are standard to the internet itself, they have been around since the year dot, and new software developers always include them as part of a browser or new software, if you want literally everyone to see your counter then this is the best type for you, the only downside to this is the statistics that the graphical counter produces are not as in depth or are ever likely to be as it's counterpart the Java Counter.

Java Counter
Our Java Counter also can produce an image or text, in fact Java really does add versatility to your counters, not unlike the Graphical counter it also can and will still capture some of your unknown visitors, like those who still have the older Web TV™ terminals in this instance they will not always see an image, and it may or may not also register as a hit in your statistics, this is because in order for your Java counter to work the visitor must have the most basic of Java installed on their machines, in the case of earlier versions of Web TV™ this was not always the case, and there are still quite a few clients like this wandering around the internet, some PDA's also have this problem.

The graphical counter will capture all PDA's, the Java counter may or may not dependant and pivoted on the simple fact of Java being installed, "you say" what about the NoScript element, well yes this works on the majority of cases where Java is not going to work, but in our tests out of every 100 NoScript visitors at least 45% of these were not counted at all! We will be expanding our tests across several sites to get a more accurate figure (which may go up or down) this test was completed across two highly trafficked sites.

The big bonus with the java counter is the versatility and in depth statistics that can be produced with this type of counter, because Java is a script and/or program instead of just an "essentially dead" graphical image the Java Counter can capture non-identifiable information locally whilst within the visitor's browser.

Last Note
One last thing to aid your decision! As I said before these pages are likely to expand on all the plus and minus of both counters, a last note on the java counter would be: there is always the possibility that the visitor has java switched off, this is becoming more and more common these day's as visitors strive for anonymity additionally and lately in some newer browser installation Java is switched off as standard and/or as default, there is a huge section of the market where users just do not know how to change this!