Alternative to recaptcha

[yettyn]

recaptcha is a nice service but, it's a bit "bulky" in that it takes rather much space of a form. It would be nice with an alternative as well, a simpler and "slim" variant. Why not re-use the solution that already been contributed to work with FT1.5? I am sure the authour would be happy to allow it to be a part of the API, and it maybe even can be improved if needed.

[Ben]

I agree - it is a bit bulky. However, it can be skinned to look however you want. See the "Look and Feel" section of the client API:
http://recaptcha.net/apidocs/captcha/client.html

I'm not at all averse to incorporating the other CAPTCHA solution, but it'll be pretty low on the list. Mostly I pick recaptcha because of their philsophy and that the work done filling in all those captcha's wasn't going to waste.

[yettyn]

Yes I like the philosophy as well, but truth is these book scans not always are so readable mainly because the source printing not always are so good, so not really recaptchas fault.

But for the alternative, understand if you have other things higher on your list, but do you accept contributions, like if I did a local extension of the api? Case it that recaptcha also doesn't fit some of my sites due to language not supported. I know it's possible to deal with that as well, but it seem more feasible to me having a simple solution.

[Ben]

Yes, that would be great if you added it to the API! Naturally, I'll review it all before making it part of standard build - and like you suggested, I'll double check with the original author that it's OK (I'm sure they'll be fine with it, though).

Thanks, Joakim.

By the way, I'll be releasing a slightly updated version of the API today or tomorrow; it just moves the recaptcha settings to the config.php file so it will never get overwritten when the API is updated. But I'll also add an option to set the default headers. UTF-8 may not always be the right pick for some people, as I found out recently... :-)

[yettyn]

Sounds great,

I will surely take a look at moving the other captcha over to api, no time frame though as project I work on also include none web parts that need to be ready before the www part, but certainly with a few weeks.

Right, utf-8 may not be the preferred charset all times, so great if that would be configurable as well.

And btw I have forgot to tell, this is a really great tool!

[RMD]

I will surely take a look at moving the other captcha over to api, no time frame though as project I work on also include none web parts that need to be ready before the www part, but certainly with a few weeks.

Yettyn, was wondering if you have made any progress on this yet?

In the meanwhile, I plugged in the javascript before the </header> where you can change the theme name, "clean" and "white" are much more mininmalist (gray/white colors) that could work a lot better with most sites and "blackglass" is good for techy, game sites.

Code:

<script>
var RecaptchaOptions = {
   theme : 'clean',
};
</script>

P.S.: The "clean" theme doesn't show the "incorrect" message--at least on mine.

[RMD]

I actually gave up on their themes and wound up using the source code from this page for a custom theme: http://recaptcha.net/fastcgi/demo/customtheme

Insert your public key and still use the ft_api_display_captcha(); afterwards.

[mariestevens]

recaptcha is a nice service but, it's a bit "bulky" in that it takes rather much space of a form. It would be nice with an alternative as well, a simpler and "slim" variant. Why not re-use the solution that already been contributed to work with FT1.5? I am sure the authour would be happy to allow it to be a part of the API, and it maybe even can be improved if needed.

try http://www.botproof.com for totally bot-proof captchas.