Simple Human Verification

While doing some work that involved contacting webmasters to have them update information regarding our office, I ran across an innovative but simple approach to human verification.

In web form submissions, developers would like to avoid having spam bots from sending in thousands of forms with junk info, so they typically use a randomly generated graphic that humans can read (sometimes) and computers can't (yet).

This form is used by Michigan simply asks the user to do a simple math problem and type the answer in a form field.  Simple yet effective (for now).

Editing PDF's

We have several online forms in PDF format.  Since I did not create the forms, I don't know if the source documents even exist.

I had to make some revisions today, and remembered how much I hate dealing with Adobe when it comes to modifying Pre-existing files.

You have to use the touchup text tool (found under tools-advanced Editing) to change the text, the touchup object tool to move around the text boxes and other objects, and to move form fields, you have to click on forms, then 'edit form in acrobat'.

All well and good.  But, Acrobat had grouped several text items together in the same text box.  I needed to move them separately.  After searching fruitlessly online, I discovered thatI can hold down the controlkey and then draw a box around the item I needed to separate from the text box.