It’s rare that I get personally frustrated by cloaking. After all, I expect those types of shenanigans from Web -2.0 companies like the New York Times.
But Experts Exchange? Holy crap, do they expect to not just frustrate people by literally scrambling the text of answers until you register?
An [screenshot of scrambling shenanigans](http://whoisgregg.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/picture-60.png) ([Actual URL](http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Scripting/JavaScript/Q_21107867.html)):
See how they cleverly position a semi-transparent GIF over the scrambled text to heighten the illusion of inconvenience? Of course, if we delve deeper we learn that the scrambled text is using a highly idiotic encryption cipher, [ROT13](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13).
No, no, they save the really clever programming for the cloaking of the unscrambled content to search engines. Oh yeah, [***that’s*** what that page is supposed to look like](http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:9Iqeuymw9kEJ:www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Scripting/JavaScript/Q_21107867.html+javascript+sort+list&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us). I guess Googlebot forked over the $12.95 a month to see giant animated banner ads for eBay and MSN Live.
Let’s face it, Experts Exchange has always been a horrific hodgepodge of self-advertisements. I’m quite certain the first dozen or so times I visited the site I never even finished the multipage scrolling trek to the first “comment,” thinking the site only existed to offer “questions” while cross-promoting it’s other services. Even the new redesign is still chock full o’ self-love.
If I had more time I’d write the Greasemonkey script to disable that transparent gif and rot13 the comments back to being readable. But, honestly, I think I’d rather just never visit their site again.
Good luck with your re-design Experts Exchange!
