Questions about the Windows XP browser warning:

Q: What if I am not using Windows XP Service Pack 2, and/or I don't see a yellow bar at the top of the webpage?

A: No need to worry.  Go back and enjoy our site!


Q: I do see a yellow bar. What should I do?

A: Click on the yellow bar and choose "Allow Blocked Content..." and then "Yes".


Q: Why does Internet Explorer warn me about "active content that might affect [my] computer" when I visit your site??

A: We use small browser programming-code programs (JavaScript) to do two harmless things on this site: 1.) To display the "Vision & Cognition Lab" message at the bottom of your browser whenever you are on a Vision & Cognition Lab page (because it looks nice), and,
2.) To hide our email address from "bots" and similar programs that are designed to read webpages on the internet and collect all email addresses that they find.  The people who collect the email addresses then sell them to companies that send out email spam.


Q: I don't care about the specifics, is there any danger to me or my computer?

A: The answer is no.  You can jump down to the last two questions, or read on for more explaination.

Q: How does a JavaScript program hide an email address? A: The design of every webpage on the internet is written into "source code".  The source code is the "blueprint" that your browser reads in order to display a given web page.  It is also the code in which the bots search for email addresses. The bots are dumb, and collect anything attached to an "@" sign, thinking it may be an email address.  So, instead of writing out our email address in the source code in a standard form (i.e., user@domain.extention), the JavaScript in our source code splits up the parts of the address on different lines. Since our address is now separated from the @ sign, the bot gets an incomplete email address, and we get no spam.  When you click on an email link on our web page, your browser is able to read the JavaScript to sucessfully assemble a link to our email address on your screen.  Cool, huh?

Q: Yah, that's all fine, but what else is going on so that my browser is warning me?  Are you installing anything on my computer?

A: Absolutely not.  That's all.  Really.  This is Microsoft being overly cautious with your browser (in my opinion).  ...However, every web site is different, and some may be programmed to do malicious things to your computer.  We're just researchers - we try to do good things, not malicious things.


Q: I still feel funny about turning off the warning.  Do I have to?

A: No.  You can still view all of the rest of the content of our website, and instead of contacting us via email (which is hidden unless you turn off the warning), you can contact us by phone or mail by navigating to our contact us page.