The Problem with Autodidacticism...

[akirlu]

So, I started out editing the Potlatch 17 web pages in MS Notepad. This procedure is Not To Be Recommended.

After a bit, Hal found a copy of EditPlus he'd registered yonks ago, and lo, their website still honored the registration, and thus I now have the latest version of EditPlus to use instead. OMG. OMG. OMFHJG. It uses COLORS. Like, so you can easily spot the difference between the tags and the operators and the comments and the content. It's like a whole new world. It's like, I may not go blind after all.

Also, David tells me I no longer have to obfuscate e-mail addresses by hand. That's a happy thing, 'cause reading the ISO codes was makin' the baby Jesus cry, and I wasn't too happy about it my own self.

When do I get to FTP webmastery straight to wetware?

P.S. - Why yes, I am procrastinating. What's it to ya?

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. It's already proved handy for me, as I add more committee people to the website.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Does obfuscating actually work? Couldn't spammers just write bots that look for the obfuscated names? Or do they just not bother?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I have no data.

I've never webmastered anything more technical than this here LJ before in my life. My Teach Yourself Instant Webmastering plan consists mostly in slavishly duplicating the tags from the Potlatch 16 site, with relevant changes in content, so coding choices are almost all those of David Levine, or his predecessors.

But David was doing it, and he does a lot of this webmastering business, so I figured he had a good reason. And now with the obfuscator, it's quick and painless to mimic his practices, so WTF.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, yes, and sometimes. But you only need one spammer to have unobfusticated an address before it starts finding its way onto lists for sale.

Further, I wouldn't use an obfusticator hosted on a third-party website where the obfustication code was on the server - they could be doing anything with the addresses (not saying these guys are, but do you remember the "What's my Mr T name?" quiz? Asked you for your date of birth, mother's maiden name, pet's name, and then gave you "Foo!" as your name. Lots of people filled that one out....)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

All this munger is asking you for is the e-mail address, so the worst they could be doing is collecting them for spam purposes themselves. Then it gives you the string back in ISO form, and the worst it could be doing with that is getting the ISO codes wrong. I suppose it's possible that someone could write a script saying "We can't give you the ISO code unless you tell us your mother's maiden name," but absent something like that, the kind of data-mining you're concerned about would certainly not be an issue here.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Sorry - didn't mean to suggest they were doing anything more than having the ability to grab email addresses, just waving at general problem of typing data into boxes on random web forms....

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

As David points out, the most the site could be doing is harvesting e-mail addresses for a spam list -- I already know their output is good.

And given the rest of the context in which the obfuscator is located, my spider sense is not tingling. Not that my spider sense is infallible at detecting scams, but it's pretty good.

Time will tell, on the spam harvest thing.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. It was the possibility of a motor club having a page with a potentially useful tool on it that triggered mine. Here's another that would have triggered my spider sense (had I not been pointed at it by the author) and that you may like (and this one is in javascript, so you can save it to a local machine):

http://www.malevolent.com/extras/character-cleaner/ - it does exactly what it says on the tin: demungs Word-type crud to clean HTML....

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah -- potentially handy thing. Thanks!

[tysolna]

I love EditPlus! I've hardly used anything else since the last century. Wonderfully handy features!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's great for previewing pages before uploading -- I'm loving that feature already.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

Several free html editors do things like that . . .

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hell, it's possible that EditPlus does -- I am but an egg.