BotDetect ASP Classic CAPTCHA Release Notes

This is the version history of the BotDetect ASP Classic Captcha component:

v3.0.9 Released 2011–11–21v3.0.9 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug with Captcha image reloading occasionally throwing JavaScript errors in IE 8 when mousing over the Captcha image while it's reloading
  • Improved Captcha image security: if no image style is set, randomize the image style for each generated Captcha image (instead of using Chalkboard by default)
  • Improved Captcha image readability: tweaked most image styles to produce easier to read Captcha images
  • Added a BotDetect trademark to Captcha images generated by the Free version of the component
  • Improved Captcha sound security: if no sound style is set, randomize the sound style for each generated Captcha sound (instead of using Dispatch by default)

v3.0.8 Released 2011–08–15v3.0.8 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug with the LBD_CreateGuid function setting the wrong object to Nothing
  • Fixed a bug in Captcha Html generation outputting the class="LBD_Placeholder" attribute twice
  • Added a workaround for the GbPlugin known issue causing Captcha validation issues for Brazilian visitors (http://captcha.biz/doc/asp/known-issues.html#gbplugin)
  • Improved Captcha image generation: slightly reduced PaintMess and Radar contrast
  • Added the Captcha component information display to all code samples

v3.0.7 Released 2011–06–13v3.0.7 migration guide

  • Improved Captcha library handling of default Captcha icons: Reload and Sound icon layout is now automatically adjusted to fit Captcha images less than 50 pixels tall
  • Improved the BotDetect Captcha Features Demo: the form now remembers set property values after clicking the Validate button after Apply
  • Improved the Captcha Code Filtering Sample: updated the sample project explanation

v3.0.6 Released 2011–05–18v3.0.6 migration guide

  • Added support for Captcha tabindex setting through the TabIndex control property
  • Improved the BotDetect setup package, so minor updates automatically remove older versions (and don't require manually uninstalling the older version)

v3.0.5 Released 2011–05–02v3.0.5 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug in the Polish locale-specific character set and pronunciation sound package: replaced 'V' with 'W'
  • Added the OnHelpLinkClick custom BotDetect client-side event
  • Updated all default character set definitions to reduce chance of character confusion: removed '7' easily confused with '1' from all CodeStyle.Alpha and CodeStyle.Alphanumeric Captcha codes

v3.0.4 Released 2011–04–11v3.0.4 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug with the Lego Captcha image style placing the most noise over the last character
  • Improved Captcha sound reliability by falling back to an assembly-embedded sound package for the default "en-US" locale if it's not present in the configured sound packages folder

v3.0.3 Released 2011–03–28v3.0.3 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug with Captcha drawing code sometimes not placing random noise properly
  • Improved Captcha image security, scaling, performance and readability (tweaked all 50 existing Captcha image styles)
  • Added 10 new Captcha image styles: Bubbles, Electric, MeltingHeat2, Neon, Neon2, Radar, Ripple, Ripple2, SpiderWeb2, Split2
  • Updated font declarations for East Asian locales, using bold fonts by default to make Captcha images easier to read
  • Updated the default Han Simplified and Han Traditional character set definitions: removed the (0x7E9F, "silk") character from Captcha codes, since it isn't pronounceable
  • The Captcha Reload button is now placed above the Captcha sound button, and only displayed if JavaScript is enabled (since it's JavaScript-dependent)
  • The BotDetect client-side initialization script is now executed before window.load if possible (when the page DOM is ready)
  • Added client ids to all relevant Captcha Html elements for easier custom scripting and styling, and changed Css class names and declarations a bit to keep them consistent

v3.0.2 Released 2011–02–01v3.0.2 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug with the Captcha code generation occasionally using less than the full available character set for random code generation
  • Fixed a bug in the BotDetect Sound Package processing code, which was incorrectly naming .bdsp files for locales with only the macrolanguage set
  • Improved sound Captcha clarity when using various newly available localized pronunciations: tweaked the Radio, Robot and Synth sound generation algorithms
  • Updated the default Cyrillic character set definition to reduce chance of character confusion: removed 'З' (Ze) and '3' (three) from alphanumeric Captcha codes

v3.0.1 Released 2011–01–17v3.0.1 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug in the BotDetect client-side script include: the BotDetect.Init() function is now only called when the Captcha image is actually rendered on the page
  • Fixed a bug in BotDetect audio processing code involving Math.Abs(-32768) edge case exceptions
  • Updated BotDetect pronunciation sound packages for Canadian French and Mexican Spanish
  • Updated default Latin character set definitions to reduce chance of character confusion with the 3.0 drawing changes (removed 'F' sometimes confused with 'E', 'G' confused with 'C', 'Q' confused with 'O', 'Z' confused with '2' and '7' confused with '1')
  • Updated locale-specific default character set variants: removed 'W' and 'Z' for the Vietnamese locale
  • Added a link to the BotDetect localization downloads page in the BotDetect Start Menu folder

v3.0.0 Released 2010–12–13v3.0.0 migration guideWhat's new in 3.0

  • Added multi-language Captcha code generation & validation, supporting various Unicode character sets and RTL languages (charsets: Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Devanagari, Han Simplified, Han Traditional, Hangul, Bopomofo, Hiragana and Katakana)
  • Added Captcha code character set customization options, using a user-defined character set for random Captcha code generation
  • Added Captcha code filtering, allowing randomly generated Captcha codes to be checked against a user-defined list of banned character sequences
  • Added Captcha code timeouts, so the Captcha can only be successfully solved within the specified time period after generation
  • Improved Captcha image security against bots (added more segmentation challenges and randomness to all 50 BotDetect Captcha image styles)
  • Improved Captcha image readability for humans (the text is larger, visual appearance is improved, there are less distortion challenges in all image styles)
  • Added Captcha image color scheme customization options, where two user-defined colors can be used to adjust the Captcha color scheme to suit any website design
  • Improved Captcha sound security, using 10 different sound styles with various effects, noises and randomizations (sound styles: Dispatch, HiveMind, Industrial, Pulse, Radio, RedAlert, Robot, Scratched, Synth, Workshop)
  • Added multi-language Captcha sound generation, using individual language sound packages downloadable separately from the main control
  • Improved Captcha sound compatibility, automatically using the HTML5 <audio> element in supporting browsers
  • Added a new sound format option (WavPcm8bit8kHzMono), resulting in smaller sound file downloads but reducing sound quality
  • ASP improvements: added an include-able ASP Captcha library / module, significantly simplifying BotDetect integration (instead of copying the old LanapBotDetectHandler.asp file and pasting a large chunk of HTML to your form source)
  • Configuration improvement: added a special BotDetect\CaptchaConfig.asp configuration file, allowing detailed customization of many BotDetect properties
  • Client-side improvements: added customizable automatic user input lowercasing, textbox focusing on reload and sound Captcha icon clicks, and automatic image reloading on Captcha code timeouts,
  • Fixed a bug with Captcha validation breaking when the same form is simultaneously open in multiple browser tabs (each Captcha instance now uses a unique key to store the Captcha code)
  • Added a X-Robots-Tag Http header to CAPTCHA image and sound Http responses that prevents search engine indexing of CAPTCHA images and sounds
  • Added new sample projects (Captcha protection on login forms, Captcha protection on multiple forms in the same application, Captcha code filtering option, Captcha customization options) and demonstration forms (BotDetect image styles demo) demonstrating new v3.0 functionality
  • Improved all web application descriptions, navigation and IIS compatibility
  • Requirements change: the COM Captcha component is based on .NET, instead of unmanaged C++
  • Added binary package downloads for machines where running the setup package is not feasible

v2.0.9 Released 2009–02–12 v2.0.9 migration guide

  • Fixed a bug with the ASP audio CAPTCHA not playing in Opera 9.5 and newer
  • Fixed a bug with the ASP audio CAPTCHA not matching the image CAPTCHA in Google Chrome (added a Chrome-specific workaround)
  • Fixed a bug with the ASP audio CAPTCHA not playing in IE when using SSL offloading (added client-side SSL detection)
  • Fixed a bug with failed ASP Ajax CAPTCHA validation attempts not clearing the stored CAPTCHA code
  • Fixed a bug with ASP Ajax CAPTCHA validation always failing for named CAPTCHA instances (CaptchaId querystring parameter set)

v2.0.8 Released 2008–05–29 v2.0.8 migration guide

  • Vista / Windows 2008 Server support (fixed a bug causing the component to crash on those OSes)
  • Added a separate version of the BotDetect ASP component setup for 64-bit (x64) machines
  • Added a CAPTCHA Reload button (allowing users to request a new CAPTCHA code if the current one is unreadable) to all of the sample ASP projects; removed the BotDetect Refresh Demo ASP sample project (since it is superseded by the Reload button functionality)
  • Added Ajax CAPTCHA validation support to the LanapBotDetectHandler.asp file, and a new ASP sample project demonstrating Ajax CAPTCHA validation (CAPTCHA Ajax Validation Sample)
  • LanapBotDetectHandler.asp general refactoring & cleanup: added support for multiple CAPTCHAs in the same ASP application, better variable names, more comments, better invalid request processing
  • Fixed a bug in the CAPTCHA randomization ASP sample, where reloading the CAPTCHA image without reloading the whole page bypasses the randomization
  • Changed CAPTCHA validation code in all ASP sample projects (to directly compare the user input to the Session state value), while keeping backwards compatibility with older code (comparing the code hashed values)
  • General refactoring & cleanup of all ASP sample CAPTCHA projects: improved usability by automatically lowercasing the CAPTCHA code input while typing, XHTML Transitional compliant code, CAPTCHA layout definitions moved to a separate CSS stylesheet, fixed some field name inconsistencies; moved all ASP sample CAPTCHA project to separate subfolders in the installation folder
  • Installation cleanup: removed the Component folder from the setup, all binaries are now kept exclusively in the Redistribute folder; the gdiplus.dll redistributable is now only installed for Windows 2000 users; replaced the outdated offline help with a link to the online documentation

v2.0.7 Released 2008–02–10

  • Fixed a bug with audio CAPTCHA sometimes being cached in IE 6.0 or older
  • Some cosmetic changes in existing CAPTCHA text styles

v2.0.6 Released 2007–10–21

  • Fixed a bug in the "lanapbotdetecthandler.asp" file causing sound CAPTCHA problems in IE 6.0 or older when using SSL
  • Added a new sample demonstrating how to dynamically reload the CAPTCHA image

v2.0.5 Released 2007–07–09

  • Fixed a bug in the ASP samples causing CAPTCHA validation not to work properly with cookies disabled
  • Fixed a bug in algorithms 5 (Split) and 6 (Wave) causing the image generation to fail when image height is set to less than 10 px
  • Minor ASP code performance tweaks & cleanup

v2.0.4 Released 2007–03–21

  • Fixed a bug causing the CAPTCHA picture not to draw correctly on Windows 2000 servers

v2.0.3 Released 2007–03–08

  • Fixed a bug with the default image format being set to GIF, despite the documentation saying it is JPEG
  • Fixed some minor inconsistencies in algorithm names
  • Updated all samples to use Javascript background sound playing, if the user's browser supports it
  • Fixed a bug with the CAPTCHA image not changing after first load in Opera
  • Added a new sample demonstrating CAPTCHA randomization
  • Moved ASP samples to a separate virtual folder, instead of wwwroot
  • Fixed a bug with the samples not being removed when uninstalling

v2.0.2 Released 2006–06–25

  • Fixed the last of the memory leaks (replaced all C++ pointers with boost shared pointers that release memory automatically)

v2.0.1 Released 2006–06–19

  • Added 10 new algorithms (for a total of 50 different CAPTCHAs)
  • Added sound CAPTCHA support
  • Improved memory management (fixed most memory leaking problems)
  • Some cosmetic changes in existing CAPTCHA types
  • Added a new sample demonstrating dynamic setting of all CAPTCHA properties

v1.0.4 Released 2005–08–11

  • Added 21 new algorithms (for a total of 40 different CAPTCHAs)
  • Some cosmetic changes in existing CAPTCHA types

v1.0.3 Released 2005–05–16

  • Added 12 new algorithms (for a total of 19 different CAPTCHAs)
  • Some cosmetic changes in existing CAPTCHA types

v1.0.2 Released 2005–03–03

  • Added new CAPTCHA types (for a total of 8 different CAPTCHAs)
  • Some cosmetic changes in existing CAPTCHA types

v1.0.1 Released 2005–02–25

  • First release