A web browser extension to measure time spent on websites.

Page Stat is a browser extension for chrome and firefox that calculates how much time is spent on websites in general and provides usage statistics for different time intervals, such as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and also custom defined. A list of accessed domains is displayed, sorted by usage time in ascending order. Select a specific domain on this list to plot the usage data for it.

Site listing sorted by usage time in ascending order

Chart displaying statistics for a specific domain

Chart statistics for a custom interval in a specific domain

For measuring the time spent on a site, the extension stores a map containing objects called as focused hosts, where each of it has two fields, following the schematics below, that indicates a host name and one that stores the time (in the unix timestamp format) for the very moment that the host was once opened.

{
	host: 'host name',
	focusedAt: 0123456789, // Unix timestamp
}

For calculating the time spent, the extension listens for each tab status, and when one of the focused hosts goes out of focus, a calculation is made by subtracting the moment when the site lost focus by the moment it was focused for the last time. And lastly, the current usage time for the host is incremented by the value obtained.

This approach is good for not relying on infinite loops for calculating time, which would be terrible, but it has a very important caveat: if the user puts the computer to sleep; minimize the browser window; or simply open another window that sits above the browser, the time will keep counting until, somehow, the page in focus loses focus.

A very obvious solution to this would be to listen to possible changes on the browser window focus, but the current extension API is unreliable for that matter. See issue 391471 and issue 387377.

For this reason, this solution is not the best in this case, but when I started working on this extension I had no idea where I was getting myself into, since I've had neved wrote a browser extension before, and I've also already spent way too much time working on this, so that will be a fix for later.

Note: apart from the information discussed in this section, the extension doesn't collect any type of data from any host whatsoever.

This extension is unable to work with window focus (reason discussed right above), therefore the time count becomes unreliable in case the user unfocus the browser window somehow. This makes that the time keeps counting up for the site that was last focusued before the window lost focus.

Right after installing the extension, it will start collecting time data from the sites accessed by following the default settings, defined in the Setting section that can be found in the page shown by options menu, that can be accessed by right clicking the extension's menu.

Options menu on Chrome

Options menu on Firefox

Clicking on the extension menu, it will show up information about the current site, disclosed on the extension's menu, showin by the following image.

The first two lines of information give the current host name and the host status. The host status tells if the extension is collecting the usage time for the current host. By deactivating it, it will stop calculating the time spent. This configuration can be changed anytime by visiting the host again or by going into the Settings section.

The middle section displays the time spent in that host on the current day.

Lastly, the Show statistics button opens up the overall statistics page, where it shows usage statistics for every visited page since the extension was installed. The same page can be accessed by clicking the Statistics option in the menu on the left.

Explain how to use the extension in the major browsers.

Information regarding the storage.

It was decided to use unlimited storage for the simple reason that the default maximum storage value is way too prohibitive, speaking for long term usage of this extension. If this is used long enough and lots of sites as accessed daily, it can take over 8MB of data (see estimation below).

To understand the estimation, let's consider the extension's storage structure, as seen below:

{
    "host": {
        "favicon": "base64 favicon data",
        "time": {
            "date": "usage time"
        }
    }
}

It's also important to consider that this is the structure for a single host and a single date. The real world usage would have several hosts and several dates for each host.

With that in mind, an estimation was taken considering the current google favicon as base64, for a usage gap of 10 years with 1000 hosts, each one having a whole day usage every single day, and it yielded a usage of 84926001B, which roughly translates to 84.9MB.

This is a very large number, but keep in mind that it's the 'worst case scenario' for a very long usage span.

The code used for this estimation can be found here.

This extension is compatible with Firefox; Google Chrome and derivatives; Opera.

• Firefox: Add-ons for Firefox page;
• Google Chrome: Chrome Web Store page;
• Opera: Follow the instructions below.

1. Install the Install Chrome Extensions addon for Opera. (link)
2. Go to the Chrome Web Store page;
3. Hit the button Add to Opera;
4. Click OK on the dialogue that will show up;
5. Click the Install button.

See the specifications regarding unpacked extensions for your particular browser.

• Fixed a bug where hosts accessed between two different days were getting their time calculated erroneously.

• First release