Track Opera Downloads “Live”
Refresh the page and timer restarts.
With the launch of Opera 11.50, curious users can now track Opera downloads “live”.
However, don’t get too excited as this is not an actual live tracker. Instead, it’s just a script to trick you into believing that this counter is tracking something. Like: var spot = 350736,rate = 8. Obviously, Opera Software did not say anything other than:
This record was beaten as part of our counter to measure the amount of Opera 11.50 downloads.
So here you have it folks, no live tracking, welcome to the age of false marketing.
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Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
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seems like the “live” countdown itself is not real, but they update it with the real number of downloads when a particular goal is achieved
The counter updates itself with updated numbers every time you reload the page, it seems. After loading the page, it just calculates an estimated amount. So reload to get the latest.
For those who can not wait to see when and what the other facts are, go to the source of opera.com (right click – source)
and search for:
div class=”step”
Polling the server for every single update, from every single user watching is not viable, of course it’s going to have the average update rate and do it client side.
However, the ‘spot’ is updated periodically with the actual value… And when I refreshed once, it had actually updated to be *more* than what my client had counted. I’d say that’s pretty good going, and they’re selling themselves short if anything. Definitely not “false advertising”.
You are correct!
Thanks for that.
I agree with Rudi. It’s not that bad at all.
Stupid to claim that this is false advertising! Obviously no website can update the counter in realtime. Its impossible. Its updated periodically.
Yeah, it’s completely retarded to claim “false advertising” when the page actually shows an updated number every time you load it. That it can’t keep polling the server every single second should be obvious even to someone like the favbrowser fool.
False advertising is a redundancy. It’s advertising for pete’s sake! Of course it’s false! Where have you guys been for 50 years?
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Opera says it’s REAL
It says, that they are pulling the real number once, when you load the page. They do not say that the counter counts the actual downloads.
It would be impossible to count the actual downloads because it would bring the server to its knees. That’s why the server generates the JS code, where it adds the latest (real) download number and the average number of downloads per second (or something like that). Based on that, the script can keep counting, and give you a fairly accurate portrayal of how fast downloads are coming.
So the counter when you actually load the page shows actual downloads. Then it uses JS to calculate based on the average number of downloads in some time period.
People were discussing this on Twitter a while ago.
glad to know its not completely bogus , correcting periodically from Opera severs or when a user refreshes a page is honest enough compared to the typical advertising Bullshit you get everywhere these days.
refreshing the page does not not give the true number I think it just starts the counter from the latest updated figure from Opera
I see a fail attempt at beating Glow.