Detecting Google Universal Analytics
Just about everyone uses Google Analytics and why shouldn't they? The amount of useful data you can pull from Google Analytics, especially if you use custom dimensions, is amazing. Whether you're A/B testing, trying to increase engagement, or improve sales, Google Analytics is just about perfect.
I recently experimented with detecting external link clicks with the current version of Google Analytics called Universal Analytics. In doing so I realized that utilities like Ghostery blocked GA, which is fine, but they also shim the ga function that I was using to detect if the third party service was loaded. Damn. It turns out you need to do an additional check:
if(window.ga && ga.create) {
// Do you ga stuff
ga('send', 'pageview');
}
Checking for the Analytics's custom create method ensures that Google's utility is there and not simply shimmed by Ghostery or a likewise service!
![Animated 3D Flipping Menu with CSS]()
CSS animations aren't just for basic fades or sliding elements anymore -- CSS animations are capable of much more. I've showed you how you can create an exploding logo (applied with JavaScript, but all animation is CSS), an animated Photo Stack, a sweet...
![Introducing MooTools Templated]()
One major problem with creating UI components with the MooTools JavaScript framework is that there isn't a great way of allowing customization of template and ease of node creation. As of today, there are two ways of creating:
new Element Madness
The first way to create UI-driven...
![iPad Detection Using JavaScript or PHP]()
The hottest device out there right now seems to be the iPad. iPad this, iPad that, iPod your mom. I'm underwhelmed with the device but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to account for such devices on the websites I create. In Apple's...
![Send Email Notifications for Broken Images Using MooTools AJAX]()
One of the little known JavaScript events is the image onError event. This event is triggered when an image 404's out because it doesn't exist. Broken images can make your website look unprofessional and it's important to fix broken images as soon as possible.
> Just about everyone uses Google Analytics and why shouldn’t they?
Google Analytics is one of the key pieces of the Orwellian world which Google is building for us. Virtually every website puts this innocent looking piece of JavaScript on all their pages. It gathers people’s browsing habits and centralizes this information in Google’s data farms. That data end up being sold on the data market and refined by data brokers such as the Acxiom company or given away for free to intelligence agencies, as everyone is now aware of. I understand why you do it and I’m not blaming you, I used to do the same until I realized what I was contributing to by doing so. I hope you’ll agree that we should thrive to make the web a tool of freedom and not a weapon of control. It’s not that people at Google are bad either, it’s just that any company that grows so big fatally end up being dehumanized. Piwik works fine ;-)
Great, thanks for posting – this works well. After years of checking for
_gaqcomes to and end…