Web Design | Dangerous Common Sense

A CAPTCHA that Works

I’ve written about the CAPTCHAs that are getting more and more complex — so complex that soon they’ll be comprehensible only to other computer programs that were created simply to defeat the CAPTCHA. (See my Philippic on bad CAPTCHAs).

So what is a reasonable way to keep forms from being filled out by automated programs? Right now I am voting for a simple-to-read CAPTCHA like the one used by San Francisco CPAs Sterck Kulik O’Neill for their business growth strategy seminars.

As Sterck Kulik O’Neill’s web master, I was copied on the email generated by their old, FrontPage form. There was no protection, and spammers frequently filled in the form with their own sales messages.

A couple months ago I switched out the FrontPage form with a clean, simple form built with tools from Simfatic Forms.

Even though I overrode the default settings in the tool and made the CAPTCHA only 4 characters and I decreased the number of interfering lines down to 2, we have received no spam “registrations”. The form, its field edits, and its simple CAPTCHA are doing their job… and clients are signing up for the seminars without reporting any frustrations or problems.

Of course, the seminar page is a low-priority target for spammers seeking to break into a site. The information on the form isn’t being posted anywhere on the Internet, it’s just being emailed to the site owner. So, high-powered spammers with the latest character recognition programs have not yet tried to exploit the form.

And, unfortunately, the CAPTCHAs in Simfatic’s tool are not ADA compliant (people with visual impairment have no option to click to hear the CAPTCHA read to them). So, we have to make sure that there’s a phone number or alternative contact method available for visually challenged people to register.

Still, for the small business web site, the simple CAPTCHA is a good, common-sense solution. Check it out!

By Ozdachs|2011-06-15T09:55:24-07:00June 15th, 2011|User Interface, Web Design|0 Comments

Don’t Let Your CAPTCHA Get in the Way of Your Business

CAPTCHA examples from LastPass forums More and more sites are using CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to keep spammers from registering on web sites, from posting phony comments on blogs, and from generating in-bound breast enhancement messages on forms.

I approve of CAPCHAs in general because they are simple for site users and they cut down on bogus messages, both those publicly posted and those sent to the business owner from a form.

But, enough!

CAPTCHAs are not going to be 100% effective against determined spammers, and efforts to increase the effectiveness of the CAPTCHA test has crossed the line into driving visitors away from doing useful business on some sites.

The CAPTCHAs on the right are full-size copies of ones I copied from my screen this morning when I was registering for a forum on the LastPass web site. Once I completed the registration form, I would be sent a confirming email to activate my account — another validation step to prove my humanness. But, I couldn’t get the CAPTCHA right in my first 6 tries.

But, look at these images! LastPass is doing more than protecting itself from automated comments in its forums, it is driving away real-life users.

These CAPTCHAs are simply too difficult to read.

The colored characters are too well camouflaged by both the background color and background pattern.
The characters are ambiguously drawn. 8’s and B’s, numeric 0’s and alpha o’s are possible answers for some of the drawings. How is the user supposed to know which o/0 to choose?
There are a variable number of characters in the images. This makes me wonder if the CAPTCHA-generating routines were working, or if some of the CAPTCHAs are simply faulty and impossible to answer.
These CAPTCHAS are particularly hostile to people with visibility issues. I am not colorblind, but the use of red and green images is plain nasty. And, unless you blow up your screen, the images are sized for the eyes of the young.

LastPass provides great functionality and responsive customer service, but they’ve joined so many organizations in over-CAPTCHAing their web sites. And, they are far from the worst offenders.

Craigslist is at the top of my list of CAPTCHA-crazy sites.

Admittedly Craigslist is a very juicy target for spammers and outright criminal frauds. But, their CAPTCHAs are ridiculous.
CAPTCHAs from Craigslist
The images on the right are ones Craigslist offered to me this afternoon when I was going to post an event for my church — information about the Sunday service.

Before seeing these images, I have had to register with Craigslist. Registration includes providing them with:

An email address which they validate.
A telephone number which they contact with a validation code. The automated message from Craigslist comes into my phone and gives me a numeric PIN which I have to type into a validation page on the Craigslist web site.

So, with Craigslist, I have to have an active account with a checked email address and a validated telephone number. THEN every time when I want to post an event, I have to type in a CAPTCHA.

And, look. Some of the CAPTCHAs have foreign-language characters. Others are too blurry for me… maybe an automated character recognition program could read and type in what’s presented by Craigslist, but I can’t!

Time for Dangerous Common Sense for CAPTCHAs

CAPTCHAs are intended to make sure real humans are filling in the forms. But, soon only the character-recognition programs will be able to decode what the CAPTCHA-generating programs have created.

It’s nuts.

Designing your web site design for determined crooks is not good business! Focusing on the crooks will cost your web site legitimate business. Pass it on!

By Ozdachs|2011-06-09T12:57:04-07:00June 9th, 2011|User Interface, Web Design|0 Comments

Why NOT Use Word Press and CMS for your Web Site?

Tech maven Leo LaPorte has been saying on his radio show that you should use a Code Management System (CMS) for your website and not have a designer create a site for you.

I like to think my disagreement with Leo comes from a valid intellectual position and not my desire to protect my business position… just as I trust that his touting of CMS is impartial and does not stem from his desire to accommodate a sponsor of his program.

Actually, I do believe that Leo comes by his opinion honestly, but I honestly think he’s wrong. Leo is a techy, geeky person. Most people who hire me are looking to offload a task and they’re not looking to learn new tech skills. They don’t want to take responsibility for building and maintaining their web site, even with user-friendly interfaces. They want someone to do the web work for them.

A good CMS lets non-technical people create, update, and delete web pages. And for fast moving businesses with staff dedicated to creating and changing web content, CMS is a good fit.

But, most of my clients don’t match this profile. They don’t have scads of information to publish and change and republish on the Internet. In fact, my biggest challenge with 90% of my clients is to get them to give me ANY content that I can publish.

I know what questions to ask and what hard copy materials to get copies of so that my clients can have a good-looking, informative web site. These businessmen don’t need help getting content to the web; they need assistance writing content!

Reason #2 that CMS doesn’t fit my clients is Control! Most code management systems come with templates and options that typically look 85% like what a client envisions. That’s a great percentage, but in my experience 85% isn’t close enough to make a client happy.

At first look they say, “Oh, wow! Great!”

The next call they ask if the blue borders could be a shade darker. That’s usually no problem. But, then they want the search box to fit on the other side of the page under the date. The technical problem for the designer is that the pre-made Search widget comes at a specific size (or location or something). Of course, it can be customized, but only with an unreasonable amount of time and effort (and client money) for the benefit.

After explaining the cost of modifications to move up from a 85% match of client expectations to a 99% match, the client suspects that the designer is being difficult. Even when the customer acknowledges that they are buying a template based product, it’s obvious that they are wondering WHY moving a box from one side of a page to the other would cost hundreds of dollars.

And, the payoff for all of the tradeoffs is the ability for the customer to do his own updates in the future. And, that’s something he is likely to do very infrequently, if ever.

I believe that CMS templates will become more robust, easier to modify, and easier to use. But, up to this point, I am not willing to risk client frustration and dissatisfaction for a functionality that the customer isn’t going to use.

Leo?

By Ozdachs|2011-04-28T23:10:14-07:00May 15th, 2011|Web Design|0 Comments

Borrow (or Buy) Functionality… Don’t Build it!

I am a fan of using third-party tools and pre-developed solutions instead of developing new features for clients.

Why?

You don’t want to be dependent on me.
You don’t want to pay for one-off development.

This month I found and used a free script from Yahoo! that allows people to click a button to hear a streamed sermon by Rev. Mary Moore, a minister for whom I just finished a web site.

Locating the tool, implementing on the client’s web site, and testing it took less than an hour. Spectacular!

Of course, with third-party products, especially those that are free, we’ll have to check periodically to make sure that they’re still working as we expect. In the case of Rev. Moore’s web site, the critical period of it to be working is a two-week period every two years… not a very stringent testing requirement.

I regularly use a third-party menu-building tool (see left-hand navigation on Rev. Moore’s site for an example of that feature). I also use a third-party form creator for displaying forms and emailingthe filled-in data to the appropriate person (see Rev. Moore’s contact page for a sample form from that tool).

It’s not that I cannot code. I was an assembly language programmer in my early career.

But paying for the time spent coding custom applications is beyond the budget of most of my clients. Plus, third parties who specialize in a particular function are likely to have designed and tested their product much more thoroughly than I could for a one-time use.

If you’re working with a web designer who wants to build a custom solution, call me first. I’m happy to tell you what third-party application I’d use, where to look for already-created tools, or else applaud your designer for tackling a truly unique situation.

By Ozdachs|2011-04-28T18:10:46-07:00April 28th, 2011|Web Design|0 Comments

Yet Another Way Flash Hurts Your Site’s Visibility

Since the middle of November Google has offered searchers a sneak peak of web pages in search results. This allows amped-up surfers a quick way to see if your site looks interesting enough for them to click on the link and visit you.

Obviously, having a page that looks good in preview will help you get visitors. Good news for Search Engine Optimizers like me, though. Suddenly, there is a whole new worry for web masters looking for traffic: how to tune your site for previews. (My original post on preview.)

Today while considering the effect of previews in attracting visitors to a site, I stumbled across another feature (bug?) of Google preview: it does not display previews of pages that use Flash. Instead Google preview shows a boring gray square:

Google Preview of Flash Page for Hotel at Casino Royale

When you’re looking for things to do in Las Vegas and you see pictures of happy people, pools, and shows on most listings and see the black and gray squares for this site, where do you think you’re most likely to click for more information?

Google acknowledges what it’s doing to Flash pages and other animated pages. It says that Google preview:

… currently does not support Flash, Silverlight, or Java applets. Flash-based content may be shown as a “puzzle piece” in the preview image. Font-replacement techniques that use Flash are currently not supported.

Terrific!

So, here’s another reason to avoid Flash on your pages: they’ll look like little puzzles when potential visitors see the previews in Google’s search results.

Fortunately, none of my client sites use Flash in a significant way. But, if your site does use Flash, run to your web designer and tell them that you want to be seen on Google Preview.

By Ozdachs|2010-12-07T12:44:12-08:00December 7th, 2010|Web Design|0 Comments