Inspired by Eva PenzeyMoog’s new book, Jeremy highlights the widespread user tracking situation in this industry:
…There was a line that really stood out to me:
The idea that it’s alright to do whatever unethical thing is currently the
Google Analytics is powerful analytics software. A common way to use it is to just slap the JavaScript snippet on every page template you have and let it collect basic data about unique visitors and pageviews and such. That’s useful, …
I saw this blog post the other day: 58% of Hacker News, Reddit and tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics. That’s an enticing title to me. I’ve had Google Analytics on this site literally from the day I launched it. …
the datasets weren’t even close for me.
Google Analytics works by putting a client-side bit of JavaScript on your site. Netlify Analytics works by parsing server logs server-side. They are not exactly apples to apples, feature-wise. Google …
I’ve long been skeptical of quoting global browser usage percentages to justify their usage of browser features. It doesn’t matter what global usage of a browser is, other than nerdy cocktail party fodder. The usage that matters is what users …
The idea for this article sparked when Chris wrote this in Thank You (2018 Edition):
…I almost wish our URLs had years in them because I still don’t have a way to scope analytic data to only show me
I’ve said a number of times in the past:
I wish I could just check a checkbox and make certain Google Analytics data public.
I get that analytics can be a very private thing for some sites. I think there …
It was five years ago when I wrote Screen Resolution ≠ Browser Window. The idea was that, at the time, there was a lot of talk about monitor size in relation to how we design websites. JavaScript is happy …
I pair with Philip Walton (who works for Google on Google Analytics) in this screencast. It complements the case-study we put together: Learning to Use Google Analytics More Effectively at CodePen.
I learned a ton about how Google Analytics …
Here’s how most people use Google Analytics: you copy and paste the default tracking snippet into your templates. Look at the pageview data that comes in. That’s all good, but that isn’t the most useful analytics for many sites. Google …
Sparkbox has this snippet to help figure out how often browser windows really are resized.
(function() {
var resizeTimer;
// Assuming we have jQuery present
$( window ).on( "resize", function() {
// Use resizeTimer to throttle the resize handler
clearTimeout( 
