The Hickensian

You folks may remember (and still use) Shaun Inman’s Shortstats, and its original mission – short and sweet site statistics. Cut through the crap of all the over-burdened packages with more data than you need, and get to the nitty gritty. I loved it, it was just what I’d been missing. Sure I had Urchin to give me the minutae of everything that happened, but I find it far too cumbersome.

Back in March, Shaun alluded to the fact that he wanted to start again from scratch, and thats just what he’s done. From next week, all you need to do is sit back, and have a Mint.

Other beta testers have revealed their favourite aspects of MInt: Jason Santa Maria, Kevin Cornell Rob Weychert, Jeff Croft, Mike Davidson, Matt Thomas and Keegan Jones. I have chosen to tell you about the interface sweetness of the Mint.

First of all, I truly despise Shaun for coming up with a better leaf logo than I have, but I’ll try not to hold that against him. He is one of those rare beasts, a combination of designer and developer, with neither skill lacking. I hate him for that too.

The main interface is comprised of a series of panels that resize with the browser window, but also wrap depending on space available. I so want to know how he does that – it’ll make a huge difference to creating fluid designs. Its possible that not everything will fit in your window in one go, so the fixed top navigation will slide you up or down to where you need it to be.

In true Ajax glory, there is no page reloading. For instance, looking at recent, repeat, or newest unique referrers is smooth.

In preferences you can choose to have scrollbars and neat little panels, or to let it all hang loose. Don’t like the default order of the panels? While you’re in preferences, re-arrange them how you like, dammit. Those panels you couldn’t care less about can be disabled here too.

Blimey, I haven’t even mentioned just how well designed it is yet. Like I said, a designer and a developer – you don’t get that very often.

I’m loving the taste of this Mint, and I reckon you will too. Its the spirit of shortstats, but with a far superior execution.

Update ” : Its live! Go try Mint for yourself and see what you think.