Comments on: Obfuscating Email Addresses

By: Kevin Teague

Kevin Teague — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:37:19 +0000

This is a very handy function in TextMate. I've made a Python version of it for working with dynamically generated HTML.

By: tekkie

tekkie — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:50:31 +0000

Mac OS X users can also use a Dashboard widget called obfuscatr. It provides JavaScript or just plain hexadecimal encoding of your email addy similarly to the Markdown functionality provided here Re the email obfuscation. See the details at http://tekkie.flashbit.net/mac-os/obfuscatr-110-released.

obfuscatr was also featured in MacWorld Italy of March 2008: http://tekkie.flashbit.net/mac-os/obfuscatr-featured-in-macworld

By: Clementina

Clementina — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 21:32:16 +0000

I’ personally like dan benjamins Enkoder, however the code it generates is too bulky for my phonebook page which displays about 70 clickable email addresses. I’m looking for something a bit slimmer.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:38 +0000

One more vote for the Enkoder, been using it since it was just the version on the web site. Personally I think it’s cruel to post an address without it.

Allan, I’m not sure that the fact that it produces 20ish lines of code will discourage people from using it (if that was indeed your argument). If that were true, so many people wouldn’t be doing it by copy/pasting with the stand-alone application. Personally I don’t find the JS distracting – it’s in a nicely formatted box – but if you do, couldn’t the bundle command then fold that block?

By: Lance Willett

Lance Willett — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 13:59:20 +0000

Allan, I would use both a command to obfuscate via the Enkoder method (inline JavaScript) and the convert ASCII to entities method.

Depending on the project I use both these methods. Right not for the entities conversion I run the link through Markdown, take the output, and paste the into the source file (for cases where the source isn't in Markdown).

So my vote is to add both into a bundle.

By: Quinn

Quinn — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 03:33:21 +0000

We’ve used Andrew Gregory’s scripts with success: http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew/webdesign/emaillinks/

Although you probably don’t want to require the inclusion of external libraries. But perhaps the idea (rewriting existing html) can be slimmed down to inline code.

By: Knechtology

Knechtology — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 08:28:48 +0000

The best non-javascript non-image method of obfuscating an email address while clicking it still works (in Firefox and IE) is in my link.

A random-text logo generated from mardeg.sitesled.com is shrunken to normal size using inline CSS, the emailto links are then accessed from separate files - CSS for IE, and XML for Firefox.

This is definitely the solution for what to put in the NOSCRIPT tags; in fact you won't see the demonstration in the link appear until you disable javascript in your browser.

By: Eric Üner

Eric Üner — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:40:58 +0000

I notice this got a little off the TextMate-specific question, so let me comment first on email obfuscation techniques in general. One method I used with great success is giving out a URL instead of email on research papers, articles, etc. that I write. Obviously this doesn’t help on a Web form where you need to put in an email address, but it has cut down on my spam from the bots that sniff for email addys. If you don’t have a URL, form a mailto:name@domain URL using http://www.tinyURL.com and give that out. Spiders pick it up as a URL (for now), but humans who click get an email link.

As far as TextMate, I don’t see the feature adding any value, because, like Allan, I just can’t believe that study. I think there are many methods in this thread that will end up being more effective.

By: Chris Griego

Chris Griego — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 03:02:04 +0000

I created an “Enkode Select” command for TextMate in my FEC (web front-end code) bundle. I’ve got it in a public Subversion repository at http://vivalaweb.info/svn/projects/fec-tmbundle/trunk/

By: Jacob Rus

Jacob Rus — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:44:17 +0000

Lewis:

well, so much for the quotes there… sorry the output got messed up. Hopefully it's still understandable