Today I released Version 2022.9 for Chrome & Firefox. The macOS & iOS version still take a bit, but I hope to release within the week.
This version mostly contains bug fixes, such as:
- fix a case, where “Ask Your Library” would not show, if core.ac.uk with inactive
- correct an issue that would occur when the core.ac.uk Rate Limit was reached
- adjust cases, where the extension icon color was not set correctly
Basic Analytics
This version does add functionality, which eventually will help me understand usage patterns of the extension. The key reason for doing this is that I simply have no good indication as to how the extension is used and unless one of you takes the time to write to me, I am not sure if anyone uses feature x over feature y.
For example core.ac.uk has a new Rate Limit, which is rather restrictive. As a free service I cannot afford to pay a license fee to use the data, but I understand how core.ac.uk needs to protect their systems. How do I know, if this is actually valuable? I don’t and thus I will start to send some basic signals to a service called TelemetryDeck (https://telemetrydeck.com), who specialize in privacy conscious analytics. Eventually it will help me understand, if I should continue work on a feature, or if it is mostly unused, remove it.
Why TelemetryDeck
TelemetryDeck is Software as a Service and their motto is “Light-weight app analytics, that’s not evil”. I do my part to not send signals unnecessarily, they do their part to further anonoymize things. This way your privacy is protected and I can get a teeny tiny bit of information, which will hopefully be helpful.
If TelemetryDeck turns out not to be helpful, I’ll remove it again.
