Reply to comment

This came up browsing a "Mac Web" site today, though it's equally applicable to the whole web.

Appleinsider had an interesting article about a new Apple patent application for extending flat-anel display life with removable LED backlight strips. More specifically, the "concept calls for side firing LEDs to be mounted on and electrically connected to one another via a flexible strip with a power feed contact that connects to the screen. The LEDs would each be spaced the same distance from each other on the flexible strip, which would folded back on itself to form a folded flex once inserted into the base of the display." Very cool stuff.

I thought I'd leave a comment. Maybe note the potential importance of the tech across a wide array of products. Maybe just point out that the Microsoft Research juggernaut, not to be left behind, announced a grand achievement of its own: a new marketing label for MS Live Life ServicesOne WindowsLive or something. : )

But upon trying to create an account, the "type in these letters" challenge to prevent automated spam - the "captcha" challenge, as it's known - presented letters that were just impossible for a human to read. Fortunately, there was a link to generate a new set of letters, an important consideration with this form of captcha. But each set returned was a real challenge to read. What's worse, some letters clearly appeared upper-case, and others lower-case - while yet others were completely unclear.

Did case matter for this captcha? There were no instructions telling visitors. So I clicked around, got one whose letters I could at least recognize, and gave it a shot. No good, I was told; I had mis-typed the captcha. Clearly, some of my uppers should have been lowers, or vice-versa... Back to the account creation screen, with password fields needing to be filled in all over again.

The next captcha image I generated looked even worse, and I gave up. It was too much trouble and I didn't even remember what the planned comment was.

Webmasters, I know that spam challenges are an unfortunate necessity, but give yours a check to make sure they're not overly frustrating for users. In particular, give some instruction if it'd help. For an image capture, does your check require distinguishing between upper and lower case? if so, say so! It'll warn people to pay attention to that matter.

A lot of would-be users will give your sign-up, commenting system, or other participatory feature exactly one shot, before moving on to another site. Don't lose them before they even get to know you.