Sunday, August 24, 2014

Tracking outbound links with google analytics, without annoying middle-clickers

As a quick and dirty solution I just added google analytics tracking of outbound links. It was really easy as I just borrowed a piece of code from this blog (kudos!). Everything went fine and the stats started coming in.

But when I later visited the site myself I realized something awful. Since I'm a obsessive middle-clicker opening all potentially interesting links in new tabs I ran into the issue immediately. It opens my middle-clicks in the same tab, transforming my middle-clicks to left-clicks.

Further googling explained everything. Many have written scripts like the one I picked and some have already considered this issue. So I read them all and improved the script I had stolen already. Here it is. Please comment if you think there's something wrong with it!


(function($) {
  "use strict";
  // current page host
  var baseURI = window.location.host;
  // click event on body
  $("body").on("click", function(e) {
    // abandon if link already aborted or analytics is not available
    if (e.isDefaultPrevented() || typeof ga !== "function") return;
    // abandon if no active link or link within domain
    var link = $(e.target).closest("a");
    if (link.length != 1 || baseURI == link[0].host) return;
    var normalClick = !e.metaKey && !e.crtlKey && e.which == 1;
    var href = link[0].href;
    var opts = {'hitType': 'event','eventCategory': 'outbound',
      'eventAction': 'link','eventLabel': href
    }
    if (normalClick) {
     // cancel event and record outbound link
     { opts.hitCallback = loadPage };
     e.preventDefault();
     ga('send', opts);
     // redirect after one second if recording takes too long
     setTimeout(loadPage, 1000);
    } else {
     // Just send the event
     ga('send', opts);
    }
    // redirect to outbound page
    function loadPage() {
      document.location = href;
    }
  });
})(jQuery);

Monday, August 11, 2014

Menu icons in eclipse linux

This very tiny issue in the linux version of Eclipse has bugged me for a couple of years. Despite the bug reports and suggested corrections I have not been able to get it to work. But today I somehow managed to figure it out. And the solution is very simple.

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/interface/menus-have-icons true