6 ms·

I don't want to be an asshole who just criticizes, but really? It's the best W3C, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Facebook, HP, Adobe, Nokia and Opera could

I don't want to be an asshole who just criticizes, but really? It's the best W3C, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Facebook, HP, Adobe, Nokia and Opera could come up with? Just look at these screenshots: http://d.pr/i/EbSt http://d.pr/i/EbSt http://d.pr/i/zmk9 http://d.pr/i/zmk9 http://d.pr/i/i9y http://d.pr/i/i9y And it took me 5 minutes to load the site - it was down when I first tried it (and on subsequent tries). So, I personally don't think this is the w3schools killer we were waiting for. At least not yet.

desbest 14y ago
Actually a "2 + 3" captcha is much more effective than a typical one with an image. You'd be surprised. When I ran a phpBB forum that spammers would join to get some of my PageRank 2 juice, putting up a special question on the registration form (by modifying the php code), was much more effective than phpBB3's captcha function with maximum difficulty applied. Spamming software doesn't have support for capctha questions, only captcha images.
- paulgb 14y ago
  It depends on the threat. If you're worried about someone writing a custom script to attack your site, you want a hard captcha. If you're worried about random form-filling bot spammers, you want to be unique. I wrote a plugin for wordpress years ago that simply asked you to copy a number into a box. If you had JavaScript, it would even do it for you and hide it so most users never even knew it was there. It filtered out nearly every single piece of spam. This would have been mid-2000s though, might be different now.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  The problem is, it's always in the form of "x + y = ?", which makes it ridiculously easy to bypass with an script. At least that's what I initially thought. But after some more digging it seems that x and y are hard-coded to be 2 and 3, respectively. I opened the registration page in 4 different browsers with different IP addresses (my own, my VPS, and a couple borrowed from Tor) and in all cases the "security" question was "What is 2 + 3?" Unbelievable.
  - sjwright 14y ago
    Ten minutes to implement, stops nearly all automated attacks that aren't specific to this site, much less user hostile, and far fewer accessibility issues. Believable.
    - dmorgan 14y ago
      Not to mention a placeholder for a more advanced captcha to eventually be deployed. Extremely believable.
iSnow 14y ago
Choosing an image sharing site that requires Javascript to display an image. Really?
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  Sorry. But I chose the only image sharing site that isn't blocked in my country (and isn't a complete garbage, and preferably has a mac client)!
- dmorgan 14y ago
  Not running with Javascript enabled? Really?
  - iSnow 14y ago
    Absolutely. Noscript is the only sane way around the web these days.
    - dmorgan 14y ago
      That and tin-foil gloves for keyboard work.
EasierLikeThis 14y ago
They say they're in alpha. Has to start somewhere, right?
dbaupp 14y ago
As someone pointed out above, the robots.txt may be like that because the site hasn't been deemed properly ready. (And similarly, the site isn't fully developed so the blog isn't set up yet.)
dmorgan 14y ago
>I don't want to be an asshole who just criticizes, but really? It's the best W3C, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Facebook, HP, Adobe, Nokia and Opera could come up with? No, it's the best a small team, sponsored by those companies, but having nothing to do with them --it's not like Google or Adobe or MS assigned their best engineers to the new site-- could come up with as an ALPHA release, and in a short period of time. Isn't it OBVIOUS?
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  > Isn't it OBVIOUS? No, it's not. I didn't (and still don't) see a mention of it being alpha or even beta on the site's homepage or the linked article. There's a notice on wiki pages that I missed. And my impression (from the article) was that the initial content is provided by the aforementioned companies' employees, and the site is curated by W3C. So it's not like a bunch of nerds have created a site and these tech giants are endorsing it by putting their logos in the main page. They are the guys who are running it, and it's not a charity, too. It benefits all these companies (whom, in total, worth maybe about 3 trillion dollars) financially. I'm not sour at them or anything - I'll probably use their site and share it with others. I'm just disappointed that it's just not up to the standards of what I was hoping these multi-trillion campaniles are able to do. If they were just a bunch of guys, I'd commend them. Now that it's a coalition of biggest tech giants, I can't be as forgiving.
driverdan 14y ago
> So, I personally don't think this is the w3schools killer we were waiting for. At least not yet. Pretty much every HTML/CSS resource out there is a w3schools killer. w3schools sucks.
- creativityhurts 14y ago
  w3fools.com tried to kill w3schools and it couldn't do it.

desbest 14y ago

Actually a "2 + 3" captcha is much more effective than a typical one with an image. You'd be surprised. When I ran a phpBB forum that spammers would join to get some of my PageRank 2 juice, putting up a special question on the registration form (by modifying the php code), was much more effective than phpBB3's captcha function with maximum difficulty applied. Spamming software doesn't have support for capctha questions, only captcha images.

paulgb 14y ago
It depends on the threat. If you're worried about someone writing a custom script to attack your site, you want a hard captcha. If you're worried about random form-filling bot spammers, you want to be unique. I wrote a plugin for wordpress years ago that simply asked you to copy a number into a box. If you had JavaScript, it would even do it for you and hide it so most users never even knew it was there. It filtered out nearly every single piece of spam. This would have been mid-2000s though, might be different now.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
The problem is, it's always in the form of "x + y = ?", which makes it ridiculously easy to bypass with an script. At least that's what I initially thought. But after some more digging it seems that x and y are hard-coded to be 2 and 3, respectively. I opened the registration page in 4 different browsers with different IP addresses (my own, my VPS, and a couple borrowed from Tor) and in all cases the "security" question was "What is 2 + 3?" Unbelievable.
- sjwright 14y ago
  Ten minutes to implement, stops nearly all automated attacks that aren't specific to this site, much less user hostile, and far fewer accessibility issues. Believable.
  - dmorgan 14y ago
    Not to mention a placeholder for a more advanced captcha to eventually be deployed. Extremely believable.

iSnow 14y ago

Choosing an image sharing site that requires Javascript to display an image. Really?

pooriaazimi 14y ago
Sorry. But I chose the only image sharing site that isn't blocked in my country (and isn't a complete garbage, and preferably has a mac client)!
dmorgan 14y ago
Not running with Javascript enabled? Really?
- iSnow 14y ago
  Absolutely. Noscript is the only sane way around the web these days.
  - dmorgan 14y ago
    That and tin-foil gloves for keyboard work.

EasierLikeThis 14y ago

They say they're in alpha. Has to start somewhere, right?

dbaupp 14y ago

As someone pointed out above, the robots.txt may be like that because the site hasn't been deemed properly ready. (And similarly, the site isn't fully developed so the blog isn't set up yet.)

dmorgan 14y ago

>I don't want to be an asshole who just criticizes, but really? It's the best W3C, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Facebook, HP, Adobe, Nokia and Opera could come up with? No, it's the best a small team, sponsored by those companies, but having nothing to do with them --it's not like Google or Adobe or MS assigned their best engineers to the new site-- could come up with as an ALPHA release, and in a short period of time. Isn't it OBVIOUS?

pooriaazimi 14y ago
> Isn't it OBVIOUS? No, it's not. I didn't (and still don't) see a mention of it being alpha or even beta on the site's homepage or the linked article. There's a notice on wiki pages that I missed. And my impression (from the article) was that the initial content is provided by the aforementioned companies' employees, and the site is curated by W3C. So it's not like a bunch of nerds have created a site and these tech giants are endorsing it by putting their logos in the main page. They are the guys who are running it, and it's not a charity, too. It benefits all these companies (whom, in total, worth maybe about 3 trillion dollars) financially. I'm not sour at them or anything - I'll probably use their site and share it with others. I'm just disappointed that it's just not up to the standards of what I was hoping these multi-trillion campaniles are able to do. If they were just a bunch of guys, I'd commend them. Now that it's a coalition of biggest tech giants, I can't be as forgiving.

driverdan 14y ago

> So, I personally don't think this is the w3schools killer we were waiting for. At least not yet. Pretty much every HTML/CSS resource out there is a w3schools killer. w3schools sucks.

creativityhurts 14y ago
w3fools.com tried to kill w3schools and it couldn't do it.