From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-07-05T16:31:39+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] flatulent-0.0.1 ascii captcha for the masses

On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 07:31:43AM +0900, ara.t.howard wrote:
> On Jul 4, 2007, at 12:47 PM, Brian Candler wrote:
> >
> >Hmm - this risks making the captcha visible by fewer and fewer  
> >browsers. OK,
> >so lynx wouldn't be able to view a PNG captcha either; but you risk  
> >locking
> >out a lot of mobile devices, set-top boxes and other embedded web  
> >browsers
> >(which could otherwise display a PNG quite happily)
> >
> >However, perhaps ASCII-art generation (as a form of unusual and  
> >disjointed
> >character set) combined with server-side rendering to a PNG would  
> >get around
> >that issue, save you a lot of work in obfuscating the HTML itself,  
> >and also
> >be harder to parse.
> 
> true.  i'm not too worried about that though.

I'd be worried about the JavaScript and CSS requirements.  In fact, I
won't use a system for validating humanity that doesn't work in Lynx,
unless some other necessary functionality of the website absolutely
cannot work in Lynx (such as Flash animations).  Even then, I'd probably
avoid something that won't work in Lynx, since (for example) a Lynx user
could navigate to YouTube and do a search to find a particular video,
then use youtube-dl to download it to the computer and play it using
MPlayer.  No in-browser support for Flash video needed.  YouTube can be a
useful website for a Lynx user -- so mine should be, too, since I don't
even provide Flash videos as the main content of any of my websites.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
McCloctnick the Lucid: "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your
time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do."