Tuesday, 22. September 2009, 09:39:11
Google, recaptcha, end, captcha
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http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-computers-to-read-google.htmlGoogle says it wants to use reCaptcha to teach its own search engines how to read scanned materials. The unfortunate side-effect is that it teaches computers to read captchas, too, rendering them useless.
Thank you, Google.
Not.
Wednesday, 3. September 2008, 22:53:26
webkit, Google, safari, chrome
Good points:
- installs without needing Admin privileges (increased computer security)
- seems to start up fast
- allows to set chrome language apart from preferred web site language
- some redraw problems with the rendering of embedded media
- javascript parsing seems pretty fast
- has developer tools like Opera's Dragonfly
- loads faster than Apple Safari though both use the same rendering engine (WebKit)
Bad points:
- installs and activates an updater service without asking (decreased computer security)
- completely ignores the colour scheme specified in the operating system by the user (especially problematic for people with bad eyesight like me)
- in the options dialogue: partially takes on the user colour scheme (good) and partially uses its own scheme (bad) which results in completely unreadable texts (black text on black background) (unusable)
- detected my location or my OS language, and automatically selected the local language as the preferred language
- page rendering is provided by AppleWebKit (Safari)... the fact that Google failed to publish a Linux version is inexplicable, since WebKit itself is meant for a Unix variant...
- WebKit has some issues with respecting the user's colour scheme settings
- WebKit has some issues with recognising HTML5 elements like the audio element, and does not recognise Vorbis nor Theora sources on my system
- Complete failure to include accessibility options, as opposed to every competitive browser
- No warning for mismatched security certificates
Conclusion: Google's Chrome is a knock-off of Apple's Safari, with a faster shell.
Friday, 18. May 2007, 21:55:03
technology, Web, Javascript, Maps
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For community websites I’m building a member locator using Google Maps to allow members to locate themselves and others around them. Pretty neat.
What isn’t neat is the following: the Google example code shows to use an XHTML doctype. Yay! Erm, no. See, in order for Microsoft’s excuse for a web browser to understand XHTML, it has to treat it as HTML, rendering all the advantages of using XHTML completely useless. The server admins know that, and instead of sending XHTML as XHTML, they send it as HTML. So the document claims to be XHTML, while both the server and the browser assume it to be HTML.
Big difference? Big difference!
Why?
Because XHTML is much, much more strict than HTML, and much, much more extensible. It’s a web author’s godsend, and a browser’s nightmare at the same time.
As said, Google Maps examples show that authors should be using XHTML files. Since I’m testing my scripts in decent browsers (Firefox, Opera), I assumed that it would be no problem to have my server send them as XHTML. Yes, I had to be the wise guy who actually tried to adhere to the standards as recommended. Took me 4 hours to recognise Google’s mistake, and 2 seconds to correct it.
The symptom: my browser wouldn’t load some of Google’s scripts, indicated by its complaining that my code was calling objects that didn’t exist.
The problem: Google’s Map scripts use a function that overwrites the running application with new code. (For insiders: check out the GScript function.)
Why is this a problem? Because the running application is being erased and overwritten by itself. XHTML is protected from such malpractice. Thus Google’s code won’t work.
HTML, as said, is far less strict. HTML browsers assume that the new code is going to be appended to the existing application, instead of overwriting it. So HTML browsers are mis-executing code which then results in a desired behaviour, while XHTML browsers are correctly exucting the same code, which then results in undesired behaviour… nice catch-22.
Google Maps documentation doesn’t talk about this catch. They probably assume everyone sends their XHTML documents as HTML, just like Microsoft. Their examples are 2 years old, and I’ve seen complaints about this same topic as far back as 18 months.
By advocating mis-use and malpractice, Google promotes the confusion about web standards, and suports Microsoft’s wish to dominate the web. I wonder whether Google has stock in Microsoft.
I haven’t found a strict XHTML solution yet, but if I did, it wouldn’t work in Microsoft’s poor excuse of a browser anyway.
WIDGETIZE