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Tracking Kerika users

Kerika, Technology,

If you use Ghostery (which is a pretty cool browser plug-in, by the way), it’s easy to see which “trackers” are being used by a website.

The only tracker that Kerika uses is Google Analytics:

Trackers on kerika.com
Trackers on kerika.com

Google Analytics is a free service from Google that we use to get a general understanding of who visits Kerika.com, from where, and using which kinds of browsers.

For example, Google Analytics tells us that an amazing 98.27% of all visitors to Kerika.com use the Chrome browser: this is way above the general market share for Chrome, which is about 29.15%!

And that’s the only tracker you will find on Kerika.

Here, by way of contrast, are what news sites like the New York Times and CNN use in terms of trackers:

Trackers on nytimes.com
Trackers on nytimes.com: 11 in total
Trackers on cnn.com
Trackers on cnn.com: 18 in total

Snacking on our cookies

Kerika, Technology,

Ever wonder how many cookies Kerika sets when you are logged in, and why?

Here’s the answer:

Kerika's cookies
Kerika’s cookies

The first cookie, called “BAYEUX_BROWSER”, relates to our use of the CometD communications protocol for ensuring that you always get real-time updates whenever you are looking at any Kerika board, no matter which browser you are using.

CometD leverages WebSocket when it can (because it’s the most efficient web messaging protocol), and makes use of an Ajax push technology pattern known as Comet when using HTTP.  Most modern browsers support WebSocket, but we still have some older versions of Internet Explorer out there that don’t support WebSocket.  This cookie helps us track whether your browser supports WebSocket or not.

The next couple of cookies are used simply to keep track of your Kerika session.

The fourth cookie, “i18next”, is really not used much right now, but we hope to make greater use of it in the future.

Right now Kerika is available only in English, but the code was always written to make it easy for us to create versions in other languages, e.g. Spanish, Chinese, etc.  This process is called “internationalization”, and is usually abbreviated as “i18n” by us nerds.

The last two cookies, “last-selected-auth-service” and “tabs”, are used to remember what you were last doing when you were logged into Kerika on that computer: when you log back in, after having logged out, these two cookies help us restore your view of Kerika to exactly where you left off.

As it says on our website, we are committed to transparency, so now you know everything about our cookies.

Want to learn more? Check out our privacy policy.

Kerika+Google users can decide whether to use Google Docs, or stay with Microsoft Office

Technology, Usability, ,

If you are a Kerika+Google user — you signed up for Kerika using your Google ID (like a Gmail address) — your Kerika files will be stored in your own Google Drive.

Most Kerika+Google users prefer to have their files converted to the Google Docs format when they upload them their Kerika cards, canvases or boards: this makes it easy for them to edit these files from inside a browser.

A small minority of our Kerika+Google users, however, prefer to keep their files in their original Microsoft Office format.

(The most common reason for this is if you are working with complex spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel is still far better than Google’s Spreadsheets!)

If you are a Kerika+Google user, you have a choice of using Google Docs or not: just go https://kerika.com/preferences and select this option:

Google Docs format
Google Docs format

Either way your files will still be stored in your Google Drive; the only difference is whether they are stored in the Google Docs format or kept in their original Microsoft Office format.

Better looking emails

Technology, Usability

The emails you get from Kerika, e.g. when someone assigns you to a card on a Task Board or Scrum Board, have gotten better:

  • The formatting is better: neater, cleaner, and there’s less verbose junk.
  • They are all sent from the same Sender Email — notifications@kerikamail.com — so your mail clients (like Gmail) do a better job of clustering them in your Inbox.
  • They all have better footers, explaining why you are getting the email, and how to contact us. (In other words, they are better at conforming to the CAN-SPAM Act.)
  • They look better on mobile devices: the subject headers are easier to scan, so if the email is something you expected, it is easier to delete it unread.
  • We eliminated the use of our logo, which saves (every so slightly) on bandwidth, especially on mobile devices.

 

Bug, fixed: handling references to websites that redirect to HTTPS

Bug Fixes, Technology, Usability,

Some sites like Kerika.com use HTTPS all the time: every URL reference, whether to our website, within our application, or even to any article on this blog is automatically converted to a secure HTTPS session.

(We are not the only ones doing this: type in “facebook.com” in your browser’s address bar, for example, and you will be automatically redirected to “https://www.facebook.com/” even though you didn’t type in “https”.)

Always using HTTPS is good security practice, but it can sometimes lead to problems for users: unless you are very familiar with a particular site, and also the type of person who plays close attention to these things, you might not understand this process.

And even if you did, you would still find it convenient to make short references to “kerika.com” (or “facebook.com”) instead of typing out “https://kerika.com”.

When you include a URL in any part of a Kerika board’s contents, e.g. in a card’s details, it’s chat or its attachments (and the same goes for canvases), Kerika tries to get the title of that Web page so the URL reference is easier to read.

We found and fixed a bug related to this: in situations where the URL, as typed by the user, actually resulted in a redirect from the referenced website (typically a “301 permanent redirect” rather than a “302 temporary redirect”), Kerika wasn’t properly showing the Web site’s page title.

All fixed now.

AdBlock was messing up our website (even though we don’t serve ads!)

Bug Fixes, Ephemera, Technology,

We discovered recently, to our considerable annoyance, that it is possible for AdBlock to mess up our website in a really serious way, even though we don’t serve up any advertisements of any sort (and never have.)

Here’s what was happening: when you use AdBlock, you have the option to add various lists of advertising sources. (You can find them here.)

One of these lists is from someone called fanboy.

If you subscribed to fanboy’s EasyList, for example, Kerika’s sign up page would not display the buttons for Kerika+Google and Kerika+Box:

AdBlock problems
AdBlock problems

(The same problem showed upon the Login page as well.)

It turns out that the EasyList filter uses JavaScript classes called social-media-header’ and social-media-button,  social-button and soc-button which were also the names of classes that Kerika was using.

The conflict caused Kerika’s signup and login buttons for Kerika+Google and Kerika+Box to not appear for Chrome and Firefox users who had AdBlock installed.

It took a while to figure out this was the cause.  We are not fans of fanboy.