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Really cool exercise in CSS. My first thought is that texts displayed using this font can't be selected/copied & won't be screen reader friendly. Might make for

Really cool exercise in CSS. My first thought is that texts displayed using this font can't be selected/copied & won't be screen reader friendly. Might make for a great way to display your email or phone number on a site without worrying it would get scraped by marketers.

sinaa 12y ago
Great idea. You could even generate a random mapping of the letters -> CSS classes on each load, making it very difficult for bots to decipher.
- aeosynth 12y ago
  Would it really though? Bots can beat CAPTCHA.
  - glomph 12y ago
    They could just make a map of the class attributes. It would be easy.
  - sinaa 12y ago
    Obviously it won't make it impossible to decipher, just harder (and perhaps not worth the effort). If the line order of each statement is also randomized and useless attributes are added, they'd have to pretty much compile the CSS and compare the attributes. The alternative way to beat all email obfuscation techniques is of course taking a snapshot and running OCR on it, but certainly not worth the effort/CPU time.
    - developer1 12y ago
      Not as much effort as you might think. Command-line rendering of html (including css and js) and taking a screenshot is not very difficult. If a site used this method, and someone is highly motivated to break that captcha, the effort put in would be nothing compared to the benefit of bypassing the "security".
masswerk 12y ago
Actually, you could put a character inside the div and use the old "text-indent: -9999px;"-trick: Copy and screen readers fixed.
- gleenn 12y ago
  Screen readers fixed, but how are you going to select to copy?
  - emitstop 12y ago
    If you can select to copy its no different than a screen reader. There's is 0 usefulness to this, and it's embarrassing that it's on the front page of hacker news right now.
mintplant 12y ago
I thought this too at first, but then I realize that an image would do the job just as well.
- emitstop 12y ago
  Seriously, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Why are people pretending this would be useful in any way at all? I see how its a fun exercise in CSS and everything, but actually providing it as a download as if people will use this productively is stupid.
  - le_lenny_face 12y ago
    >this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen Lol obligatory XKCD! http://xkcd.com/1497/ http://xkcd.com/1497/
- kuschku 12y ago
  And if you want an infinitely scaling image, you could even use an SVG.
hrktb 12y ago
Nice idea. Even just preventing the information to get sucked up during search engine indexing and cached in the description can be a valuable side effect.
taivare 12y ago
I have been trying to find out if the single-stroke text used by 'Hershey'text extension in Inkscape is visible to screen reader's/scraper's/bot. This type of text font is used in Blueprint's.

sinaa 12y ago

Great idea. You could even generate a random mapping of the letters -> CSS classes on each load, making it very difficult for bots to decipher.

aeosynth 12y ago
Would it really though? Bots can beat CAPTCHA.
- glomph 12y ago
  They could just make a map of the class attributes. It would be easy.
- sinaa 12y ago
  Obviously it won't make it impossible to decipher, just harder (and perhaps not worth the effort). If the line order of each statement is also randomized and useless attributes are added, they'd have to pretty much compile the CSS and compare the attributes. The alternative way to beat all email obfuscation techniques is of course taking a snapshot and running OCR on it, but certainly not worth the effort/CPU time.
  - developer1 12y ago
    Not as much effort as you might think. Command-line rendering of html (including css and js) and taking a screenshot is not very difficult. If a site used this method, and someone is highly motivated to break that captcha, the effort put in would be nothing compared to the benefit of bypassing the "security".

masswerk 12y ago

Actually, you could put a character inside the div and use the old "text-indent: -9999px;"-trick: Copy and screen readers fixed.

gleenn 12y ago
Screen readers fixed, but how are you going to select to copy?
- emitstop 12y ago
  If you can select to copy its no different than a screen reader. There's is 0 usefulness to this, and it's embarrassing that it's on the front page of hacker news right now.

mintplant 12y ago

I thought this too at first, but then I realize that an image would do the job just as well.

emitstop 12y ago
Seriously, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Why are people pretending this would be useful in any way at all? I see how its a fun exercise in CSS and everything, but actually providing it as a download as if people will use this productively is stupid.
- le_lenny_face 12y ago
  >this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen Lol obligatory XKCD! http://xkcd.com/1497/ http://xkcd.com/1497/
kuschku 12y ago
And if you want an infinitely scaling image, you could even use an SVG.

hrktb 12y ago

Nice idea. Even just preventing the information to get sucked up during search engine indexing and cached in the description can be a valuable side effect.

taivare 12y ago

I have been trying to find out if the single-stroke text used by 'Hershey'text extension in Inkscape is visible to screen reader's/scraper's/bot. This type of text font is used in Blueprint's.