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Thread: Open Source Software

Author Image Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger
Edited and endorsed by PGTS, Home of the world's most humble blogger

FireFox Still On Fire!


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Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 12:53:12 +1100

I have now fixed the problem with the scripts that update my agent stats.

The problem was caused by a subroutine that parses the Apache logfile entry while analysing the behaviour of each agent, trying to work out whether the agent is a genuine browser or robot cloaking itself as a browser.

There was a junk line in the Apache log file that caused this routine to routine rubbish to the main procedure, which caused it to crash when the logging procedure tried to write it to the database. Older agent_strings (like MSIE 6.0) were being updated. The figures for MSIE 6.0 had been growing all month. However the figures for Firefox, and many other fairly recent agent strings had not been updated.

Had it not been for the fact that GoogleBot was also not being updated, I may not have picked this up till much later. I realised the figures were wrong when I saw that GoogleBot had a ridiculously low figure of 642 hits for the month. I knew that it would have to be at least five times that figure (it is actually eight times larger - see The Robot Information Page For GoogleBot)

I added the following line to the parse routine:

	return() if ( $_[0] =~ m/[\x00-\x07]/);

In other words return an empty list (skip it) if the string contains bodgie characters.

I re-ran the scripts and ... order was restored! GoogleBot sits at the top of the robot hits table (see the current Summary List of Robots.

In the browser OS share, Linux now has its' usual 7.2% and Windows 2000 and 98 continue their steady decline (as they are replaced with XP).

And FireFox is burning up the chart!

The rate of increase is very impressive! Firefox is now at 28%, rapidly gaining on MSIE 6.0 at at 40% ...

(gasp!)


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Copyright     2005, Gerry Patterson. All Rights Reserved.