This is by no means a new post (May 2006), but it’s still relevant. Nobody likes CAPTCHAs. It can be hard to decipher the letters and they’re annoying. They help keep the spam down though.

Well, there’s a better solution than forcing people to enter twisted letters and numbers into a form. JavaScript. The modern web pretty much doesn’t work without JavaScript, so people have pretty much stopped turning it off (the few that do are wackos who wish the web was still the way it was back in the days of the MOSAIC browser).

Safer Contact Forms Without CAPTCHA’s

15 Days of jQuery’s tutorial teaches how to implement an interesting technique that uses JavaScript to generate unique strings that are verified in the form processing script on the server. If the strings are null or false, the script denies the client access. It’s not foolproof, of course, no anti-spam solution is, but it’s a great deterrent, and a far less annoying one than CAPTCHA.

• Microsoft to launch beta of Internet Explorer 8 - Internet Exploder 8 is coming soon. Is Microsoft even listening to our protests about the <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> meta tag? I will be talking about this insidious new “feature” more in-depth sometime in the next few days.
• 99 Sites ALL Designers Must Know About - There are plenty of familiar sites in this list, and quite a few ones that are new to me. The post lives up to its title; If you’re a designer, or an aspiring designer, then this post is definitely worth a look.
• What’s it Like to Run a Popular Blog? - “Running a well-established blog, while challenging, is very much worth it. It takes a lot of hard work to achieve, though — and a lot of time.”
• 15 Wordpress plugins that a professional blog should install - I use several of these plugins, though this post has encouraged me to try a few others. Oh, and I’m sure you can guess what the first one on the list is…
• Bad flavor: ICANN, Network Solutions sued for domain tasting - Why ICANN? Network Solutions was the one tasting the domains. Why should ICANN be responsible for a registrar’s nefarious activity?
• Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples - Navigational inspiration, Smashing-style.
• WordPress 2.5 Plugin Settings Pages Style Guide - If you’re a plugin developer, you may want to see this post.
• 25 Ways To Improve Your Site In 5 Minutes
• Voting has started for the 2008 Webware 100 Awards. Be sure to vote for WordPress!
• Top 10 Worst Captchas - Don’t make your Captchas like these ones!
• The Big Word Project - Another innovative concept along the lines of the notorious Million Dollar Homepage. It’s a dictionary of sorts, where, for $1 per letter, your site can be the new definition of the word. Instead of linking to a normal dictionary definition, the word will link to your site instead. Too bad the words I would consider buying aren’t in their so-called dictionary…
• Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
• Smashing Magazine Best Of February 2008