Peppermint Tea

New Pepper - Doorbell by Shaun Inman

Posted 11 April 2007 in by Sam Brown - 9 Comments

A new Pepper by Shaun Inman, called, yes.. Doorbell allows you to see visually and/or audibly when a new visitor arrives at your site.

This paneless Pepper will chirp and/or flash every time someone accesses a page on your site. Unique users flash green while repeat users flash white with a lower chirp.

This initial release can be downloaded from the Peppermill.

From the release notes:

This Pepper uses Ajax polling (against a flat text file so there is no database overhead) to check for new hits every 2 seconds. To prevent drilling a hole in your server, this Pepper is automatically disabled when “Allow anyone to view Mint” is enabled.

Be sure to let us know how you like or dislike this Pepper!

Sam Says:

589 days ago #

I installed it on my high traffic Mint site and it sounds like I have an irregular heartbeat.. makes me feel queasy. Epileptics will love it too!

 
Shaun Inman Says:

589 days ago #

| A new Pepper by Shaun Inman, called, yes.. Doorbell…

What’s wrong with that name? :D You have a visitor. You hear a sound announcing them. Too obvious? In a future version I might allow you to provide your own repeat/unique visitor sounds.

Personally, I hate this Pepper. Just as I was starting to ween myself off the green, I figured out a reasonable way to implement this crazy idea and got sucked back in. Now I don’t even have to be sitting in front my computer to check my stats. I can hear visitors from the living room!

PS. I think it’s funny that you were the first to comment on your own post. :D

 
Sam Says:

589 days ago #

I didn’t believe the name at first thats all, but it works! I love that you hate your new Pepper, I hate it too! =)

Was trying to leave my personal opinions to the side a little, didn’t want to say “this Pepper will make your ears bleed and possibly give you a seizure” in the body of the post. A comment seemed more appropriate.

That said, true stats freaks will no doubt love this!!

 
Brajeshwar Says:

589 days ago #

What? You mean I should be listening to a continuous doorbell as soon as I open my mint page. Shaun gotta be serious kidding and April fool’s over, right? Or was this for for those new site where the authors wait and watch for visitors?

 
Julian Schrader Says:

589 days ago #

Maybe you should build an OS X dashboard widget with this functionality — I personally don’t have my Mint overview open all the time.

I’ll try it out — but I think it has to be disabled soon ;-)

 
Josh Jarmin Says:

589 days ago #

Thanks for the great work, Shaun. Adding custom sounds would be really great. Also, a OSX dashboard widget would be a lot better, since I don’t normally leave Mint open and on top all day long. Why can’t it chirp when Mint is not the focused tab? I would like to just have it open in a tab and then hear it chirping while I browse other sites.

 
Shaun Inman Says:

589 days ago #

I don’t think a Dashboard widget will work for the same reasons the Doorbell doesn’t work in a background tab. http://webkit.org/blog/96/background-music/

However it will work if you leave Mint open in a background window. Or you could point something like Steven F’s WebDesktop at your Mint installation. http://stevenf.com/software/webdesktop/

PS. Sam, I think the Textile in your Textile Help window is being processed into HTML before it gets to the browser. Not very helpful ;)

 
Sam Says:

589 days ago #

Thanks boss, hadn’t noticed. Fixed.

 
Till Krüss Says:

585 days ago #

This Pepper is absolutely unnecessary and annoying :P

 

Commenting closed for this article.