I'm wondering if using autocomplete fields, like SO uses for tags in question posts, goes some way to filtering out spammers/bots.
If the field requires a user to make a selection according to some simple rules, this may mean that the bot can't proceed effectively.
Any thoughts?
Autocomplete has no effect whatsoever on spam bots. It does not affect anything they do - it's only offering suggestions as you type. You can type whatever you want, totally ignoring the suggested text. Spambots likely won't have the Javascript enabled that permits autocomplete to work, anyway.
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I am not quite sure how to ask this and if my title is correct. Please edit this question if seen fit.
Redmine has a feature where user can filter certain user defined parameters when performing search:
I would like to know if there is a term for this kind of feature so I can research more regarding this. I'd also like to know if there are existing technologies (i.e. frameworks/cms/plugin) that support this kind of feature. I want to reuse exising technologies if possible and at the same time have this kind of search feature.
My requirements are similar to that of Redmine. That is, instead of Issues, I search Users and the attributes related to that user. The requirements are as follows:
I can add a user, specify the attributes related to this user.
Perform a search on the user and specify the parameters where to the search the user.
My guess is that there is no real term for this, beyond "advanced search"; unfortunately these functions range from simple to mind-bogglingly advanced.
I am usual software developer (not Usability specialist); so it is interesting for me to know opinion of usability professionals about the following question.
I would like to know: how often usability specialists recommend using feature AutoComplete (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocomplete) in modern GUIs? Has presence of the AutoComplete in GUI become a 'standard' to the moment?
This depends a lot on the overall design. Autocomplete increases usability only in some cases, in other it may be inappropriate or distracting. The only way to know in your particular case is to conduct usability testing.
I've implemented autocomplete on several different projects with user base ranging from 200 to 500 and have collected feedback on this feature. From my experience, users love it as long as it's fast.
My favorite control to do autocomplete is jQuery's: http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/autocomplete
It doesn't start filtering until shortly after the user is done typing. This is important because you don't want to flood the server w/ too many ajax requests.
With Microsoft SharePoint 2007 I replaced the out-of-the-box search with a live search that does autocomplete. This is probably the most used feature in the site
I created a few "portlets" with large amounts of grid data and I use a built in quick find that filters the data for the user. These are also used quite a bit
One other thing to mention is I'm not too certain how 508 compliant it is so you may want to provide an alternative so the page w/ autocomplete can fail gracefully without sacraficing the user experience
Look at discussion on http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=79272&type=member&item=49087267&qid=3ed96f17-25c4-4cac-b92d-69c37925f5bc&goback=%2Egna_79272; it is devoted to the Auto-Complete feature too. Some exampkles and ideas were written there.
I have a site with a simple contact form using ASP for customers to e-mail quote requests. However, I'm getting quite a few messages through with no contact information; I think people assume that their e-mail address is coming through automatically.
I'd like a simple way to make the e-mail and/or telephone number fields required, preferably so that the fields are highlighted as such if they're submitted without anything in them. I've Googled for this but they seem either too simple, diverting people to a separate page and requiring a 'back click', or incredibly complicated with massive reams of code.
Any suggestions?
EDITED
You should use a combination of server-side validation as well as client-side (JavaScript) to ensure there are no security holes in your form.
For any specific coding examples, please direct the question to Stack Overflow.
You can use "ASP form generators" that generate both server side and client side scripts.
I would like to know if and how it is possible to create a clickable email-link for websites, that are "encrypted" in a way emailspiders can't collect them and it is still possible for living users to click it to open in email-clients or even copy it.
I saw some links that were done in javascript but I on't know how they did this and how "safe" they are.
thank you in advance for any reply
Most approaches to this are splitting the address across multiple elements and inserting extra formatting; then for JS-enabled browsers, they use JavaScript to turn it back into an e-mail address.
The poster example for this is SpamSpan, which even has several "levels" of obfuscation - each level progressively less and less resembles an e-mail in the source code, yet it still manages to piece it back together by JS. Although some spambots today are supposedly capable of executing JavaScript, te vast majority doesn't - and the e-mails are still human-readable with JS off. An advantage of JS-assisted de/obfuscation is that it doesn't rely on external servers, you just need to (simply) integrate the JS library.
Another approach is taken by reCAPTCHA Mailhide - the e-mail is revealed only after solving a CAPTCHA (same type as for normal reCAPTCHA). This is less convenient for the user, but practically safe against robots. A disadvantage of this is that it depends on reCAPTCHA's servers (in essence, on Google) - some people are dead-set against any external dependencies.
This would be a very simple and effective way:
Scramble email addresses
All it does is convert it into ASCII, and all you need to do is insert it where your email address would go!
Although there are more (crazily) secure ways you can choose, this would be the simply option. You can also try this solution, it uses JavaScript to protect your email.
Hope this helps!
I'm working on implementing a tagging system in my application. I've been reading some of the other questions on SO about database schemas used to implement tags and they've been very helpful, but I havent' found any that talk about how to combat tag spelling errors and things. So if two people enter the same tag but they are spelled incorrectly, it becomes a problem when others go searching for tags, or if you want to do any reporting off of tag information. What kinds of things to others use to help avoid this? or do you just have to put up with it?
Having moderator-level community members can assist in this event. The re-tagging of things should be able to be flagged by a member, changed by a moderator. The same goes for question alteration, title changing (for clarity). Community driven databases are good for this, given effective scoring system to prevent malicious editors.