5 October 2007

This is a blog item that needs to be converted to the new Bliki format

MooTools Independence

Mootools is a compact, modular, object-oriented JavaScript web application framework, intended to make the process of writing extensible and cross-browser compatible code more efficient. It is lightweight, powerful and makes use of many new JavaScript coding functions. The extra functionality is easily applied to page elements by using class and id attributes in a similar way to using CSS.

We were using the MooTools Ajax class for our Simple Forms and Livelets extensions, but both of them have now been updated to use MediaWiki's native ajax functions. Even though MooTools is an excellent framework, it's always best to reduce dependency where practical, and since our ajax requirements are so basic, the MediaWiki components can easily accommodate them.

This is a blog item that needs to be converted to the new Bliki format

Countering the SmartBots

The vandal bots are getting smarter, we've been using the ConfirmEdit extension in its default state which requires new users to answer a simple mathematical question upon registering. But tonight a number of them have managed to sign up successfully passing the basic CAPTCHA. So I've now upgraded the configuration to the next level of difficulty using the familiar form of image CAPTCHA which sometimes comes up with some very strange word combinations such as the one shown to the right.