Category Archives: Software

Internet Explorer IMG Element & Empty Width/Height Attribute Error

Programming, Software

Recently found an error, bug or omission within the Internet Explorer rendering engine which I haven’t personally encountered before. The error involves the familiar <img> element and the use of the width and height attributes.

The following <img> element definitions will render as expected within Mozilla and Opera:

  • <img src="/path/to/image.jpg" />
  • <img src="/path/to/image.jpg" width="" />
  • <img src="/path/to/image.jpg" height="" />
  • <img src="/path/to/image.jpg" width="" height="" />

When a web browser encounters an img element without width or height attributes, the browser is required to render the image in its default aspect ratio. When either of the width or height attributes are provided, the browser is required to resize the image when rendered to meet the requested size.

Unfortunately, when Internet Explorer encounters items two, three and four listed above an error occurs where the browser does not render the image at all. Instead of disregarding the img elements empty width and height attributes, it considers the empty value to equate to zero (0) and the image is rendered appropriately.

Akismet, Stopping Website Comment Spam The Easy Way

Blogging, Software

Akismet web site spam filtering has blocked 100,021 spam messagesBy now, everyone should be acutely aware that I hate spam. In fact, I hate it that much that I think I’ve written about it every couple of months:

This time around it is no different, as Akismet just keeps on keeping on. I first installed Akismet toward the start of August 2006 as I was being overwhelmed by the volume of comment spam I was receiving. Initially, it was just one or two website spam messages but it soon increased at a rapid pace. I was receiving so much comment spam, I just couldn’t handle it manually anymore and I needed a way of stopping the spam for good.

After looking around at various WordPress comment spam filtering solutions, such as Bad Behaviour and Spam Karma; I ended up deciding on Akismet. There were a couple of reasons that I felt that Akismet was going to perform a better job stopping website spam, the main one being it was driven by the community. Spammers just love to prey on the masses and there sure is a mass of blogs on the internet. If the blogging community backed Akismet, then it seemed reasonable that as soon as enough bloggers flagged something as being spam – I wouldn’t have to worry about it either. As it turns out, this is absolutely the case as very few comment spam messages actually get through the Akismet filtering. I hate web site spam so much that I have comment moderation on as well; I know it might frustrate some commentors but I would prefer to vet a valid comment than see spam land on my site.

Akismet has now been protecting this site from website comment spam for approximately nine months and in that time it has successfully axed about 100,000 spam messages from ever appearing on the site. I can only imagine how hard it must be for people running web sites or forums these days that don’t have easy plugin access to a service like Akismet to stop website spam.

Pretty significant milestone I thought, go Akismet go!

WordPress Security Vulnerability

Blogging, Programming, Software

Some period of time after WordPress 2.1.1 was released, one or more of the WordPress servers was breached and the attacker edited the PHP source of a handful of files within the 2.1.1 download files.

The WordPress crew were fast to react to the news and have released a statement, which states that they have boycotted the release of WordPress 2.1.1 as they don’t know exactly when the attacker breached their servers.

The WordPress development team have also released WordPress 2.1.2 which is recommended as a mandatory upgrade if you previously upgraded to WordPress 2.1.1 within the last week or so. I would expect that in the coming weeks, we’ll see some new security initiatives from the WordPress team to try and reduce the chances of this happening again in the future.

Akismet, Friends Forever

Blogging, Software

Akismet Spam Filter, Caught & Nailed 80,010 Spam Messages In Five MonthsIn the last five months, I have posted twice about the wonders of the free spam filtering service Akismet.

Since the last installment, another ten weeks have pasted. In the last ten weeks, approximately 30,000 new spam messages have been received and all of them have been blocked in one way or another. Since installing Akismet back towards the middle of last year, it has now dropped a whopping 80,000 spam messages at the door and it feels great!

You know what I’d like, I’d like it if the spammers were a little more intelligent. Clearly I’m running something on my site that is blocking their spam from ever reaching the public. If I were a spammer, I’d be keeping a close eye on what web sites my spam bots submit to and what sites it is getting through on. Essentially, if they are just brute forcing thousands of web sites – they are not being efficient spammers. At the moment, they could be spending the majority of their time spamming sites that the spam will never reach; instead of focusing their energies on the sites that spam is actually being registered on.

This can’t be a new idea but it sure seems as though the spam is relentless, even though it never makes it onto my live site.

WordPress 2.1 Plugin Compatibility

Blogging, Programming, Software

Since the recent release of WordPress 2.1, I thought I would proactively check all of my WordPress plugins for compatibility.

I was pleased to find out that through using the suggested plugin development practices that all of my plugins worked without changing anything. Whilst I was checking the source code for them over, I did squish a few small bugs at the same time; so there have been very minor upgrades to all of the WordPress plugins.

Happy blogging.