{"id":131,"date":"2005-09-06T13:11:28","date_gmt":"2005-09-06T11:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/09\/06\/mint-review\/"},"modified":"2008-04-25T02:37:54","modified_gmt":"2008-04-25T00:37:54","slug":"mint-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/09\/06\/mint-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Mint Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mint The Mint<\/a> is out! Yey! Fighting hard not to give it a special treatment<\/a> (I\u2019m neither paid for writing this, nor am I Shaun Inman\u2019s<\/a> buddy), let\u2019s start with a tour.<\/p>\n

The promo site<\/h3>\n

The promo site<\/a> is very nice – Inman\u2019s<\/a> style is well recognized. Fancy large headlines and buttons, trendy details<\/a>… and Buy now<\/em> button? Ouch… Somehow, I had a feeling that Mint will be freeware, or at least shareware. Oh, well – thirty bucks is a fair price for such piece of software, let\u2019s then see what\u2019s offered.<\/p>\n

Watch out! Slippery!<\/h3>\n

Opening demo page<\/a>… oops! Somewhat inconvenient notification:<\/p>\n

\n

The demo has been temporarily disabled. While Mint can easily handle recording hundreds\u2013if not thousands\u2013of hits a minute, it is not optimized to display data at that rate. Please check back once some of the initial interest has died down.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Okay, he didn\u2019t expect this (or did, but had no backup plan). Downloading 7 megs movie took a moment for me, but I don\u2019t know what a visitor with a slower connection would say about that. But then again – if the A-list guys love it<\/a>, it\u2019s probably cool.<\/p>\n

Interface<\/h3>\n

Demo movie shows the main advantage of the Mint<\/a> and – like with the Blinksale<\/a> – it\u2019s mostly about the interface. It\u2019s obviously a trend of adding cosmetics to already existing functionality in a way Apple<\/a> sells its\u2019 products – proven solutions in an attractive package. User experience is definitely what\u2019s hot this season, baby.<\/p>\n

(Ed: At the time of this writing I haven\u2019t laid my hands on it, take the interface evaluation with a reserve.)<\/em><\/p>\n

No Firefox and Safari – no Mint for you<\/h3>\n

So, let\u2019s take look at the requirements. Ooh! Compatibility test! Hot! Like that. But wait. Whatta?<\/p>\n

\n

In order to view Mint you should be using a modern browser with support for transparent PNGs, modern DOM scripting (including XMLHTTPRequest) with competency in CSS 2. Safari or Firefox, both free, are highly recommended. Internet Explorer PC support is planned but not an immediate priority. IE Mac will not be supported.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ouch! I mean ouch<\/em>! Paying for something that works in approx. 30% (and I\u2019m being generous with the numbers) browsers? The application is probably great and all, but I fell that that<\/em> was just a little bit too ambitious decision.<\/p>\n

No JavaScript – no records<\/h3>\n
\n

In order to record hits Mint requires JavaScript be enabled. This may be an issue for some but was a necessary trade-off that prevents Mint’s results from being skewed by non-human spiders, crawlers and referrer-spam bots.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m not very happy with this neither. The stats system should record all traffic<\/em> and filter junk out. This way, the numbers are not accurate, which is not something I\u2019d expect from something I\u2019m willing to pay for. Also, making decisions for me is not something that I like very much if I\u2019m the one with the money.<\/p>\n

Gimme, gimme, gimme!<\/h3>\n

After reading all materials at the promo page<\/a>, I went to purchase. For me, paying for a software is not a big deal, especially if I can learn a lot about how it\u2019s done and develop it to suit my needs (there\u2019s plug-in API called Peper<\/em>, which was a great move).<\/p>\n

A cold shower once again – payments are made through PayPal<\/a>, which means I\u2019m not able to purchase it. And I really wished it.<\/p>\n

Maybe if someone who reads this, is a good friend of Shaun<\/a>? If you are, could you please ask the Wolf to send me application on a CD and I\u2019d cash-on-delivery since I live in a country<\/a> not good enough for PayPal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h3>\n

In short – if I\u2019m not web developer interested in how it\u2019s done, I couldn\u2019t care less, since there\u2019s plenty of similar (and sometimes more accurate) free tools which I can still log into from an internet caffee with plain old IE (which I do when I\u2019m out of town). JavaScript as a requirement on the visitor\u2019s side is just one more reason for a second thoughts. Needless discrimination, considering the hype, the popularity of the ShortStat and the Shaun Inman\u2019s<\/a> tallent.<\/p>\n

Update<\/h3>\n

Wait a minute! $30 is <\/em> a fair price for a license, but per site<\/em>? Slightly modified sentence from Jason Kottke<\/a>: If one is good at everything else as she is at making a successful business plans she\u2019s in trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mint is out! Yey! Fighting hard not to give it a special treatment (I\u2019m neither paid for writing this, nor am I Shaun Inman\u2019s buddy), let\u2019s start with a tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}