November 2021 Development Roundup (Patreon)

Hey everyone! November was the first month in a while that I could spend a lot of time on my software projects, so there's a lot to talk about in this roundup.

Switching to Plausible Analytics

For years, I've used Google Analytics across most of my projects to track usage data. I know not everyone likes tracking scripts, but it's helpful to know how many people use my stuff, and it's how I know which projects I should probably prioritize. I also have never collected personally-identifiable information from anything I make — I don't want anyone's personal data, nor do I need it to make my software projects better.

I've wanted to switch to Plausible Analytics for a long time, but it costs money each month, so I set it as a Patreon goal. I'm now making enough money that I can pay for Plausible myself without relying on Patreon revenue, so during November I started moving projects away from Google Analytics.

Plausible is a more privacy-respecting analytics platform than Google Analytics. It doesn't store IP addresses or track people across devices in the same way Google does, and it loads quickly. On my end, Plausible is much easier and quicker to navigate than Google Analytics.

Nexus Tools

Nexus Tools is an installer for the Android SDK Platform Tools package, which includes ADB, Fastboot, and other applications. It's still one of my most-used software projects, and back in September, I completely rewrote it for the v5.0 release (I also wrote another blog post about the rewriting process). During November, I released two more updates.

Nexus Tools v5.1 fixed some issues with detecting Apple Silicon Macs (compared to Intel-based Macs), and switched the analytics reporting to Plausible Analytics. I've made the Plausible dashboard for Nexus Tools public, so anyone can go look at it. Intel-based Macs are still the most popular platform, followed by x86 Windows, Apple Silicon (ARM) Macs, and Chrome OS.

Nexus Tools v5.2 included more fixes for Apple Silicon/Rosetta and analytics, but more importantly, it's the first release where all the Dart code has been compiled in the cloud. I spent some time creating a GitHub Action that allows me to click a button, and within a few minutes, Nexus Tools is compiled in the cloud for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Even though I'll still have to test most new changes to Nexus Tools on all three platforms, the new GitHub Action will make it easier for me to roll out new updates.

Link Cleaner

Link Cleaner was updated last month to add support for links generated by href.li (a popular method used to hide referral sources, used by Tumblr and others) and l.facebook.com (found in many posts on Facebook). Now when you put links from those services into Link Cleaner, it will revert them to their original URLs. I also switched Link Cleaner to Plausible.

Wii Shop Channel Extension

A while ago, I made a browser extension that played the Wii Shop Channel theme in the background when you had a shopping site open. It had a few hundred users, and then during November, it was linked in a Reddit comment on a popular AskReddit thread. After that, I started receiving pull requests for adding features and adding more sites.

I'm sorting through the submitted code, and I'm hoping to release an update soon that both adds some of the requested features (like controls for the music and more tracks) as well as detection for more shopping sites. I'll talk more about it here when I release the update.

ImageShare

ImageShare is my basic web app for sharing images from one device to another using QR codes and Imgur. I mostly made it as a replacement for the Nintendo 3DS Image Share Service, but it also works just about anything else (including very old web browsers), because it's not dependent on client-side JavaScript code or HTTPS.

At some point, I'd like to switch the back-end code to something besides PHP, but in the meantime I've cleaned up the project a bit. The readme has been updated with a better explanation for what the app does, and the website at imgshare.corbin.io has been switched to be auto-generated from the readme.

I also switched ImageShare to Plausible, which ended up being an interesting challenge. I was previously using a Google Anaytics tracking pixel (which Google mostly intended for use with emails), because any JavaScript code slows down the Nintendo 3DS' web browser. Plausible Analytics doesn't have an option to use a tracking pixel, so I ended up using Plausible's API to report pageviews using back-end PHP code. This means I can keep JS code out of ImageShare (an important factor for low-end/old browsers) and still get usage data.

PhotoStack/PhotoStack Classic

During December, I switched PhotoStack and PhotoStack Classic to use Plausible Analytics. I also removed support for importing images from URLs from PhotoStack Classic, because the service that the feature relies on was shut down a while ago. The functionality had already been removed from regular PhotoStack for the same reason.