Update 17th October 2007: QuickTime Check has been updated. Please see this post for more information.
Introducing my first Pepper for the amazing Mint from Shaun Inman. It's designed to show what percentage of your visitors have QuickTime installed.
This is obviously of interest to me as I serve a lot of QuickTime content on this website. I was quite disappointed to find that only about 45% of my visitors (EDIT: This was due to a bug in the first version, see below) have QuickTime installed! So I guess a lot of people have seen my bright pink 'QuickTime missing' image.
Update 4th January 2007, Version 1.4
Ok - the problems people have been having were down to a silly mistake on my part. Overlooked only as I was on a Mac host previously which didn't pick up the problem. I recently swapped to Media Temple and it stopped working for me too at that point. Anyway it's all fixed now.
Update 20th December 2006, Version 1.3
Version 1.3 now shows percentages for Mac and PC users independently. It also has a completely overhauled QuickTime checking script which is much more accurate than the last version (It's now based on this script). Specifically it now correctly detects QuickTime on Windows IE6 - it didn't before which I hadn't realized from my testing of version 1.
Update:
Fixed a bug where some installations of Mint would not function properly after installing QuickTime Check. Thanks to Paul and Shaun Inman for finding and solving the problem!
Download and Installation
- Download and unzip this file (please see this page for the new version 2)
- Create a folder called 'benvallack' in the Pepper folder on your server.
- Put the unzipped folder and it's contents 'quicktimecheck' inside the 'benvallack' folder on your server.
- Click 'Install' in your Mint preferences and install the QuickTime Check pepper.
- Enjoy!
This is my first Pepper so I've hopefully got everything right. It seems to be working fine on my installation but do let me know if you find any problems with it.
 - Dartmoor.jpg)
This would be really helpful especially for people who publish videocast, to see how many of their viewers have Quicktime, I'm definitely gonna try it out.
Written on Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 23:12hrs by Martin
AWESOME! Thank you so much for creating this. I've been wanting this from Mint forever.
Written on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 1:08hrs by paul
Fantastic Pepper Ben, been waiting for something like this for a long time now. Thank you.
Written on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 5:07hrs by Sam
Thanks! Let me know how you all get on with it. Also feel free to request features, I'll be happy to improve it.
Written on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 7:57hrs by the author
While I'm not a Mint user, well not yet at least. I guess it would be good to check what other media players people have, such as Windows Media Player (e.g. 7.1, 9, 10, 11) or Real Player, etc..., unless of course there is a Pepper already out for those (not sure since I'm not currently using Mint).
Written on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 9:56hrs by Yannick
One feature that would be awesome is if it could exchange data with the "User Agent" Pepper to break it down by platform. Obviously, all Mac visitors should have QT, but knowing how many PC visitors have it would be great. Thanks again for the awesome pepper!
Written on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 15:51hrs by paul
Ahh - great idea Paul. I'll look into that.
Written on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 15:56hrs by the author
Ben, this is a fantastic Pepper - thank you so much for developing it! I'm sure you'll find this becomes very popular in the Mint community. Incidentally, this is an absolutely beautiful site, as is the photography, painting, and footage created by you and your Dad. Thanks for a massive dose of inspiration!
Written on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 6:25hrs by Elliot Jay Stocks
Uh, oh... found a bug. With the QT Check pepper installed, the main visits pane doesn't know the difference between 'unique' and 'Total'. It shows the same number for both. Based on past traffic it appears to be using the 'Total' number for both columns. I tried simply deactivating the QT Pepper, but that didn't solve the problem. But, after uninstalling the pepper, the visits were counted properly again. Has anyone else had this problem?
Written on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 12:24hrs by paul
Not yet a Mint user, but love the idea of knowing what % have QT installed, and would love knowing what version of QT.
Written on Saturday, December 2, 2006 at 2:19hrs by SC
Thanks Paul - It doesnt look like that bug is showing up on mine - I'm seeing indepentant values for both Unique and Total throughout the whole Visits pane. Is it doing it persistently for you? i.e if you reinstall the Pepper?
Written on Saturday, December 2, 2006 at 4:36hrs by the author
hmmm... strange. I've tried it on two different installs of Mint, and I can reproduce it every time. As soon as I install the pepper, the visits pane starts counting each page view as both "Total" and "Unique'. It starts counting normally again as soon as I uninstall the pepper. Here's some stats on both sites: running Mint 1.29, and Wordpress 2.0.4. My pepper list is minimal... Default, Backup/Restore, User Agent 007, and Local Searches. The sites are separate, and each use their own databases, but they are running on the same hosting package (at Media Temple). I'm not sure what else to try. Has anyone else reported this issue?
Written on Saturday, December 2, 2006 at 14:17hrs by paul
Hi Ben, you need to remove the closing PHP tag (?>) in class.php. The whitespace that appears after that closing tag is breaking some Mint installations by preventing headers from being sent (used when setting login cookies and redirecting when logging out). It may sound like a sloppy coding suggestion but it's actually a best practice recommended for this very reason by the people who created PHP. Nice work otherwise!
Written on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 16:30hrs by Shaun Inman
Awesome! I tried Shaun's suggestion and removed the 2 empty lines (returns) from the bottom of 'class'php', and that fixed the problem. WooHoo! I actually left the closing tag (?>) in place. I couldn't tell from the comment if I should remove it, or just remove the white space below it.
Written on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 20:45hrs by paul
Thanks Shaun - would never have got there by myself! QuickTime Check has been updated.
Written on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 23:13hrs by the author
Ben, nice pepper. I found that if you have "Fix pane height and use scrollbars" checked under Mint Preferences, you pepper doesn't display correctly.
Written on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 3:39hrs by Simon
Ouch - you're right. I'll look into it. Thanks!
Written on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 5:31hrs by the author
Mine appears empty with QTCheck1.3. It is only counting Mac visitors while 91% of my audience is using a PC. Both PC and Mac platforms are showing as 0% Quicktime installs. Do you know what I can do to debug this, or what might conflict with this?
Written on Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 20:34hrs by Ernie Oporto
Sorry to hear things aren't working out for you Ernie - I guess there might be a conflict with another Pepper or some other Javascript file on your pages. Debugging process would probably be to disable all your other javascript scripts on the page and see if it behaves any differently. Let me know how you get on. I suppose there's also a chance it's conflicting with another Pepper, I wouldn't want to recommend uninstalling all your peppers to see if it works though.
Written on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 3:48hrs by the author
It looks like I'm having the same problem as Ernie... PC visitors aren't being counted at all (0 of 0), and it says that none of the Mac visitors have QT (0 of x). I would think that mac should always be 100%, as the OS gives you no way of easily uninstalling it... it's a core component of OS X. Even in OS9 it would be unusual not to have QT.
Written on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 13:34hrs by paul
I tried removing all other javascript, it didn't help. I'm only running the base set of peppers, so I doubt it's a conflict there. Any other suggestions?
Written on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 14:18hrs by paul
Hum - grave news! Very odd - I'm wondering if it's to do with the upgrade process - the old version was uninstalled from within Mint before you replaced the files and installed the new version right?
Written on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 15:20hrs by the author
yep... totally uninstalled (from within Mint) the old version prior to installing the new one. I've since uninstalled, and reinstalled several times. No luck :(
Written on Friday, January 5, 2007 at 16:57hrs by paul
I'm chiming in with the same behavior on a clean install of QT check with a brand-new install of Mint on a server for a client. Two issues seem to be affecting me: First, it doesn't register any visits unless it's coming to the root of the site (as opposed to my development directory). Second, once I start checking from a file in the web root, all visits from a Mac get counted, but report 0% quicktime installation. Safari 2.0.4 and Firefox 2.0.0.1 tested. Perhaps this is an emerging issue for you. Anxious to see a resolution for this great little plugin! (Conceptually great, anyway. ; ] )
Written on Saturday, January 6, 2007 at 20:02hrs by kit
This works now with the 1.4 version. Thanks!
Written on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 14:11hrs by Ernie Oporto
I've only been using 1.4 for a few minutes, but so far it looks like it's working :) Thanks for the continued development. Awesome Pepper!
Written on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 17:17hrs by paul
Looks like there might be a problem in IE7 (as usual). If the QuickTime Check ActiveX control is not enabled, IE complains and asks the user if they want to enable it which is an obvious problem. I'm not sure what circumstances that would happen but it happened to me and rarely use IE7 so it wouldn't have been a setting I changed. Since your detection example uses Apple's scripts, you may want to recheck your scripts.... they don't suffer from this "activate" problem.... http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/examples/detectallplugins.shtml
Written on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 12:30hrs by Dave (Spin This!)
Nice! I will install it immediately.
Written on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 16:30hrs by Kyle Korleski
Very nice idea! But it seems as it doesn't log visitors for me. I have tried to visit my own page both with Windows and OS X (and different browsers)... I have Quicktime on both machines, but the graph doesn't even count the visits...
Written on Sunday, May 13, 2007 at 1:58hrs by Kristoffer Forsgren
Is mint setup to ignore your visits? Also I think if you have visited the site before it might not register it, try emptying your cookies and hitting it again.
Written on Sunday, May 13, 2007 at 2:08hrs by the author
That did the trick =) Too bad that all my friends and visitors I've had earlier doesn't get counted =/
Written on Sunday, May 13, 2007 at 2:41hrs by Kristoffer Forsgren
What's the status with regards to the message posted by Dave (Spin This!) on Tue, February 27th '07 at 12:30? Is this an issue?
Written on Saturday, June 16, 2007 at 8:07hrs by Abu
Hiya, I haven't got round to looking into it actually, I will try and check it out soon. Sorry for the delay.
Written on Sunday, June 17, 2007 at 22:16hrs by the author