Antiquated browsers fail CAPCHA

December 5, 2005 5:49 PM

This new login "safeguard" bites. I was having good results reading Metafilter with the lightweight browser Dillo but logging in was impossible because Dillo lacks the capacity to display the coded characters one must enter "to prevent automated submissions". It doesn't work in Lynx either. This "feature" effectively restricts full participation in Metafilter to those who use recent fully-graphical browsers, which is a pain on this 9 year old machine I'm forced to use till my replacement power supply gets here. (It might also impact blind Mefites; anybody know?)

Is there another way to prevent automated submissions? Was there a problem with those that I hadn't noticed or is this new safeguard just one of those "nifty idea" kinds of things?
posted by davy to Bugs at 5:49 PM (3 comments total)

You mean other than the problem described in the other, currently-open MeTa thread about the captcha (in which Matt also mentions that you'll only get a captcha from the 2nd attempt on)?
posted by mendel at 5:58 PM on December 5, 2005

I think if the new thing prevents asshat hackers, it's worth the loss of the .0000001% of the users who don't have graphical browsers.
posted by crunchland at 6:05 PM on December 5, 2005

Yeah, sorry about it, but keeping hack attempts out was job #1. I'll work on it so you get at least one or two tries without graphics. Sorry lynx users, but it'll be a day or two.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:07 PM on December 5, 2005