NetherPanel Usage

Summary

NetherPanel uses WebStart?. WebStart? is a technology from Sun that launches applications maintained by a remote provider. Basically, what happens is this:

Each time you start NetherPanel, WebStart? contacts my web server to check for a newer version of NetherPanel. If you have never downloaded NetherPanel (or cleared your cache), or, if a newer version of NetherPanel is available than the last version you downloaded, NetherPanel is refetched from my webserver. A progress bar is shown indicating this progress. As soon as NetherPanel is downloaded and up-to-date, NetherPanel is launched from your local version which resides somewhere in the Java Temporary Files.

Because WebStart? checks for a newer version each time you launch NetherPanel, it is possible to track when users start NetherPanel (a log entry is made in the server logs about this update request). The following graph shows the amount of *unique* visitors per time frame (a day). One person launching NetherPanel twenty times a day will only count as one. The graph is calculated only once per hour to avoid massive amounts of CPU usage on the server when many requests hit it.

The Graph

The following graph is produced by Google Charts API from this server's Apache access logs: