Windows has a nice option labeled Show characters
right below password input fields:
Useit.com recommends it: It’s time to show most passwords in clear text as users type them.
So without further ado, here’s what it looks like on the web: unmasking the password field This is the HTML code from the example:
How I use captcha without making my users complete the barely readable word
Capthca sucks. For more information on how much captcha can suck see John Willis’ post Top 10 Worst Captchas.
But at the same time it can be really annoying for webmasters to have their forms unprotected with all the spam bots running free out there.
What I wanted was to have the commenting feature protected against spam bots without having the innocent human users ruining their eyes on captcha like images, or complete any mathematical equation or any other additional question fields.
One very important difference between a spam bot and a human using a web browser is that the first can’t run JavaScript code. However, this isn’t a perfect criteria of selection, because there are humans browsing the web using browsers without JavaScript support (Opera Mini for mobile devices for example).
My ideea (and as I did some Google searches, I found out other people had similar ideas) was the followig algorithm:
Does the user have JavaScript enabled?
If yes, he’s ok. Let him comment.
No? He’s a suspect. Read him his rights and give him the ultimate “are you human?” test.
To do this I left the captcha system enabled and in place and wrote 2 extra lines of JavaScript that:
//complete the text field with the correct word from the image:
$('secretword').value='nospam';
//hide the div containing the captcha image and the text field:
$('captcha').style.display='none';
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