A couple of days ago I got a call from my dad. He was at my grandfather's house, working on the laptop he and my mom gave him for Christmas. One of the primary reasons for giving him the laptop was that it had a webcam, and they were setting him up on Skype to be able to video-chat with our enormous and widespread family. But now there was a problem. He wasn't seeing any video -- mine or his -- on his end, even though I could see him when we would call each other. Days before this, we had tested everything and it was working perfectly.
So what changed between the passed test and the failed test?
New location, ISP (Grandpa's house)
Installed Microsoft Office
Turned on Windows "Large Fonts"
My grandfather, like so many older people, doesn't have the greatest eye-sight, even with his glasses; and the Large Fonts feature of Windows really helps him use the computer.
As it turns out, this was the culprit. Changing back to "Normal" fixed the video problem. And through some clever tuning in the dialog found by clicking the "Advanced" button in that screenshot, you can make the fonts larger without using "Large Fonts," if necessary. I know Skype hasn't done this intentionally, and I've sent them a bug report via their suggestion form.
In the meantime, I hope this helps someone else out there trying to fix their grandparents' video problems.
Everyone agrees that Microsoft is not the really best when it comes to usability, right?
We've probably all looked at this dialogue at some point during our lives and said, "How about a No to All button, Microsoft?"
But did you know it's possible? Hold the shift key while you click the "No" button, and Windows will act as if there were a "No to All" button and you clicked it.
I'll be away camping this weekend, so if you're leaving comments on my awesome plugin posts and I'm not answering, that's why! I'll be back Sunday afternoon. See you then!
It occurred to me the other day, while filling out a CAPTCHA to leave a comment on a friends blog, that there is further room for improvement in most implementations, putting aside for the moment the fact that there are better alternatives. But if you have ever used a CAPTCHA before, chances are you've asked yourself this question: Is it case-sensitive?
And is it? Who knows?!
The solution!
Hardly anyone goes out of their way to indicate whether the CAPTCHA response is case sensitive, and, even worse, some even use fonts where the lower-case-L and upper-case-i -- and this isn't the only set of easily confused letters -- look essentially the same. As long as they're not getting spammed, that's good enough for them. Sadly, the solution is so easy that the careless among us are only hurting themselves. A simple CSS addition can make a world of difference.
Step 1:
Only use capital letters. This alone won't solve your problems, but capital letters are much more easily distinguished from one another in most fonts. Even if you don't have a nice pretty configuration screen for your CAPTCHA asking for a set of characters to choose from, I guarantee you it's in the code and would be a piece of cake to change. For example:
Add a text-transform property to your CSS for the CAPTCHA response input field. Specifically, text-transform: uppercase;. This takes away almost any doubt a person might have over case sensitivity. Try it yourself; type some text in this box and see how much better life with CAPTCHA can be:
Extra credit:
Add a small line of text next to your CAPTCHA explaining that case doesn't matter. If you have the ability, choose a font with unambiguous characters.
