------------------------ Changes in 1.5:

* Disk access should be greatly reduced. As a result, general speed of the counter is faster.

* In all circumstances, an error log will be generated and put into the Counter Data Files folder. In addition, it will no longer log startup messages. It will only write out information during an error condition.

* Several situations where crashes can occur have been eliminated. Some exceptions were being thrown and not caught in some cases.

* Previously, during a database flush from the counter, the server would hang for several seconds depending on the number of .dat files in your Counter Data Files folder. This issue has been dealt with on several levels.

* [PLUGIN ONLY] A problem was fixed in which using the remote administrator utility with more than a handful of referral and ignore items in the preference lists would cause the server to crash.

* The counter will now cache the images in the "digitdir" folder. If your counters use this font, they will see a large increase in speed, since the server won't have to load the images out of this directory every time it's accessed. Other custom fonts will still be loaded real-time, so users of these fonts won't see such an increase in speed.

* The server now only updates the .dat files that need to be updated periodically. Previously, every two minutes, the server would rewrite all the .dat files if any counter was accessed. Now only the .dat file that is accessed will be rewritten. This will make for greatly reduced lag times on large servers with many .dat files.

* There seems to be a problem when running the counter plugin under Quid Pro Quo (and Plus). A memory leak is causing some machines to crash under heavy load. After doing some testing, it appears that the fault is on QPQ. WebStar, WebTen, and others don't seem to show this problem.

------------------------ Changes in 1.2 of the Plugin and Setup, and 1.4.2 in the CGI

* [PLUGIN ONLY] Changing preferences in the Count WWWebula Setup application may take up to 1 minute before being propogated to the plugin. If you change preferences via the remote administration functionality of the plugin, the changes are immediate.* Fixed all known/reported crashers in both the CGI and the Plugin.

* [CGI ONLY] Disabled AppleEvent threading. This may slow down the responsiveness a bit, but it will be much more stable.

* [CGI ONLY] CGI will now remember the Quit On Idle setting.

* Now uses Non-LZW-based GIF compression code. Unisys and CompuServe can't sue me anymore, THANKS to Hutchison Avenue Software.

* [PLUGIN ONLY] New remote administration feature. You can now use the URL "/pi_admin.count" to access prefernces to your counter from anywhere in the world. Make sure you set up security for the word "Admin" in your web server.

* All preferences information from the preferences file is now cached in memory, so access for each hit should be more reliable and faster.

------------------------ Changes in 1.1.2 of the Plugin and Setup, and 1.4 in the CGI

* Stricter Rules On File/Folder Locations: No more ambiguity with font folder locations. They live in the 'Counter Data Files' folder. The 'Counter Data Files' folder now lives only in the same folder as the Count WWWebula Plugin (usually the Plugins folder of the web server application).

* Trailing Slash Stripped: For you ISPs out there, in the cases where your clients may get confused over what to put for the arguments to the counter, it now automatically strips off the trailing "/" from the arguments if one exists. Some ISPs clients were doing the following: <img src="http://someplace.com/counter.acgi$stuff/stuff/font=caliblu/width=4/"> Which is most definitely wrong. In these cases the counter automatically wipes the slash from the end of the arguments. The resulting URL is as it should be: <img src="http://someplace.com/counter.acgi$stuff/stuff/font=caliblu/width=4">

* [CGI ONLY] Menu and Preferences Altered: Added 'checked' menu "Quit On Idle". This will disable the quit on idle edit field in the preferences dialog, if you have it turned off. Otherwise it will enable it. Now you don't have to type in '0' in order to keep the CGI from quitting after an idle period. Important Features:

* Aliases Supported: Now support aliases whenever possible. Aliases of the Counter Data Files folder, aliases of the font directories, and aliases of image files.

* Cached counters: All counters are stored in a cache at startup of the web server. While people access your web pages, the counters in memory are incremented. This reduces the amount of disk access. The counters are then written out to disk every 2 minutes in case of a system crash. If you edit the data file while the web server is running, the counter will read in the new information instead of flushing out it's cache, thus your changes to the data file will show up instead of being overwritten (note: it could take up to 2 minutes for your changes to show up on the web page)

* Changable Default Font Names: The default digit file names can now be changed with a resource editor like ResEdit or Resourcerer. Just open up the counter plugin in your resource editor and edit the STR# resource with ID 10131. For example, change "zero.gif" to "0.gif" if all of your digits use numerals instead of spelling out the number.

* [PLUGIN ONLY] Hidden counters and status pages: The following features involve changing the way the plugin is called in your HTML code. 'noinc.count' -- will not increment the counter, only shows the current hits. 'nofont.count' -- will not show any counter at all, but still increments it. It will only return a 1 pixel transparent gif instead. To use either of these features, simply change the name of the plugin in your HTML code: If your HTML code looks like this: <img src="/counter.count$greg/index"> Change it to either of the following: <img src="/noinc.count$greg/index"> -- To not increment the counter, but show it. OR <img src="/nofont.count$greg/index"> -- To not show the counter, but increment it.

------------------------ Changes in 1.1.1 in the Plugin:

* Checks for a modified dat file before overwriting it. (It remembers the last modification date). This way, you can edit dat files while the web server is running. (1.1.2b1)

* No more ambiguity with font folder locations. They live in the Counter Data Files folder. And the Counter Data Files folder now lives only in the Plugins folder. (1.1.2b4)

* The default digit file names can now be changed with a resource editor like ResEdit or Resourcerer. Just open up the counter plugin in your resource editor and edit the STR# resource with ID 10131. For example, change "zero.gif" to "0.gif" if all of your digits use numerals instead of spelling out the number. (1.1.2b5)

* Now support aliases whenever possible. Aliases of the Counter Data Files folder, aliases of the font directories, and aliases of image files. (1.1.2b5)

* For you ISPs out there, in the cases where your clients may get confused over what to put for the arguments to the counter, it now automatically strips off the trailing "/" from the arguments if one exists. Some ISPs clients were doing the following: <img src="http://someplace.com/counter.acgi$stuff/stuff/font=caliblu/width=4/"> Which is most definitely wrong. In these cases the counter automatically wipes the slash from the end of the arguments. The resulting URL is as it should be: <img src="http://someplace.com/counter.acgi$stuff/stuff/font=caliblu/width=4"> (1.1.2b6)

------------------------ Changes in 1.0 in the Setup:

* Changed resource swapping code to be more thread-safe.

* Worked out a load of bugs in the Preferences File ...

* Rearranged menus to be more intuitive.

* Minor interface tweaks to clean and speed it up.

* New pref panel tabs. "Klingon Tabs" as they've been dubbed by CodeWarrior fans. With the advent of these tabs becoming non-internal Metrowerks sources (they shipped with CW Pro1) I decided to put these in. I've always been a big fan, but I've never been able to use the sources in my own products until now.