Archive for the ‘Motigo Lexicon’ category

What are CAPTCHAs?

Thursday July 16th, 2009

A CAPTCHA is a validation code (combination of letters and numbers), which you are asked to enter before submitting information to a website. CAPTCHA is actually an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” CAPTCHAs display an image that people can detect, but computers cannot and it is used to keep malicious computer “bots” and other automated programs from using Web forms.

recaptcha

Actually a good idea, but there’s a lot of time and effort involved in it. Approximately 150.000 hours are spent every day by users around the world trying to decipher CAPTCHAs. Sometimes they use distorted images like wavy letters or a background with a strong pattern, which makes it difficult for humans to read them too. ReCAPTCHA, which we use on motigo, aims not only to make this easier but also to give this lost time a useful purpose.

reCAPTCHA uses real words instead of the code fragments used by conventional CAPTCHAs. The words used by reCAPTCHA are words, which computers could not read when digitalizing a book. So, when you type a reCAPTCHA, you are actually helping to digitalize a book. Read more on the reCAPTCHA website .

Want to use a CAPTCHA on your website? Find out how in Tips&Tricks. For futher informations, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

What is web usability?

Tuesday May 26th, 2009

Web usability is about making your website user-friendly and easy to use by your visitors. A website will be considered user-friendly if visitors can navigate intuitively on the website, understand your message immediately and easily find what they’re looking for (which should never be more than 3 clicks away).

Sites with high usability are regarded by users as informative, useful and easy to navigate. This gives them a positive user-experience and encourages them to come back again.

These are the most important factors for a user-friendly website:

  • Easy navigation and clear orientation (user finds its way on the website easily)
  • Uncomplicated text, easy to understand (wording)
  • Relevant content, clearly arranged on the site (Headings, titles, etc)
  • Text adapted to different reader types (scanning, detail reading, etc)

Along with content and page layout, usability is a key factor for the success of your website.

What are social bookmarks?

Wednesday April 1st, 2009

Social bookmarks are web page bookmarks that are saved online. Basically, they have the same purpose as the bookmarks (or favourites) in your browser, with one important difference: They are always available to you, doesn’t matter which browser or computer you are using.

Why should I use social bookmarks?

With the help of social bookmarking services (such as Digg, Misterwong, Del.icio.us, and many more) you can bookmark interesting pages or websites that you visit often and access them from every computer.

But that’s not the only advantage of social bookmarking: They also let you share your favourite sites. You can add tags (keyword descriptions) and comments to your bookmarks, allowing other visitors to find your favourite sites easily. And, of course, you can use them for your own website too. With accurate tags and comments, other users will find the way to your site and this will improve your ranking on search engines. Read more about it on Tips&Tricks

Here’s a great video explaining all you ever wanted to know about social bookmarking in less than three and a half minutes: