RadComboBox not working within a ModalPopupExtender

I just figured out a problem I was having with a Telerik RadComboBox within a ModalPopupExtender and I thought I would share. The Extender worked fine, but when I clicked on the ComboBox the sliding drop down would not show. Turns out all the controls were working just fine, it was a CSS problem. By default the ModalPopupExtender div is set to a z-index of 100001. The RadComboBox slide div is set to a z-index to 6000. Essentially, the slide div was under the popup div. You can fix the problem by boosting the z-index of the slide div. I did it with jQuery:

$(document).ready(function ()
{
 $("div.rcbSlide").css('z-index', 100002);    
});

"ASP.NET Development Tips/Tricks" are coming!

During my years of developing in Visual Studio and ASP.NET, I've learned a few things here and there which helped me become more efficient when creating applications.

At the risk of sounding stupid, I'm going to share with the community some tricks I've learned. I don't know how many posts there are going to be, but I hope something I say might have value to someone else.

Some tips and tricks to prevent Email Harvesting / Scraping

First a little background for those of you that don't know. The term Email Harvesting or Email Scraping comes from the trick some spammers use to get valid email addresses.

Overly simplified, harvesting works as such: Some automated program goes out to web pages and looks over the source HTML for text that matches email formats (name@domain.com or mailto:name@domain.com). This software then stores matches to a database for spamming later.

<rant>
Web developers pay attention, nothing erks me more then web sites that post my full email address for all to scrape. I don't think I'm the only one that feels this way.
</rant>

So how do you prevent your email from being harvested?
Here a couple of suggestions:

• Be creative with how you present your email address so they don't match the standard format.
• Examples include:
• name at domain dot com
• name shift+2 domain period com
• String.Format("{0}@{1}.com", "name", "domain");
• Use some type of masking javascript to obscure the email address
  • Example: (tool used: about.com:Javascript)

<script type="text/javascript">eval(unescape('d%6fc%75%6de%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74e%28%27%3Ca%20%68%72ef%3D%22%26%23109%3Ba%26%23105%3B%6c%26%23116%3B%26%23111%3B%3A%26%23110%3B%26%2397%3B%26%23109%3B%26%23101%3B%26%2364%3B%26%23100%3B%26%23111%3B%26%23109%3B%26%2397%3B%26%23105%3B%26%23110%3B%26%2346%3B%26%2399%3B%26%23111%3B%26%23109%3B%22%3E%6ea%6de%3C%2fa%3E%27%29%3B'));</script>

• Use HTML encoding of some flavor
  • Example: (tool used: about.com:Javascript)

<a href="&#109;a&#105;l&#116;&#111;:&#110;&#97;&#109;&#101;&#64;&#100;&#111;&#109;&#97;&#105;&#110;&#46;&#99;&#111;&#109;">name</a>

• Use an anti-bot process
  • Example: (Google Groups)
    • Clicking on the ellipse (...) of the email takes you to a CAPTCHA form

• Use an email friendly URL shinker
  • Example: (tool used: http://is.gd)
    • Entered "mailto:name@domain.com" 
      and got http://is.gd/XBs 
      (try it - you should experience the standard behavior of a "mailto," usually launching an email client)

Of course this is all a cat and mouse game. The harder we make it to harvest our email address the smarter the automated software becomes to figure it out our obfuscation. We just got to stay a step ahead of that darn cat.

<disclaimer>
I offer my advice with not warrantee or guarantee. Feel free to run with anything, but use at your own risk.
</disclaimer>