Today, Taco Software released Taco HTML Edit 2.5, the latest edition of its popular HTML and PHP editor. The Component Library, new in Taco HTML Edit 2.5, allows you to select one of 20 components, customize it, and insert it into an HTML document. From Slideshows to Pie Charts, from Accordion Controls to Scrollable Tables, the Component Library has the widgets that web designers have often wanted to add to web pages, but until now have been very encumbering. The Component Library revolutionizes how web designers create web pages.

Each component has many customization options, and you can see your customizations in a Live Preview while you are configuring the component. Don't like a change you make when customizing a component? Just use the Component Library's support for Undo and Redo. You can also preview your component in a web browser, using the same menu options available for previewing documents. Once you like the configuration of the component, just hit the "Insert" button to place the component in your web page. Any needed scripts, images, and style sheets are copied to a directory that you specify. All components are compatible with Safari 3+, Internet Explorer 7+, and Firefox 3+, with most components also supporting IE 6 and Firefox 2. Components are implemented using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Taco HTML Edit 2.5 also includes many other new features, including Snow Leopard compatibility, JavaScript code completion, preview and live preview for CSS and JavaScript documents, and live spell checking in Mac OS X 10.5+.

Taco HTML Edit 2 costs $24.95 USD per license, and can be downloaded from Taco Software's web site. A free, 30-day trial is available.

• Fixes an issue in Live Preview that occurs after installing Safari 4 Beta, where linked scripts, images, and style sheets would not be reloaded when doing a manual refresh of the Live Preview.
• The directory contents of a project will now refresh when a "Save As..." is performed.

• Fixes an issue that would occur when using the Format Tags menu when editing in Live Preview mode.
• Fixes a crash that could occur when closing a tab.

• When referencing an external CSS file or JavaScript file in an HTML document, Live Preview will now reflect changes to those external files that have been made in Taco HTML Edit (even if those changes are unsaved).
  
  
• Improved Preferences user interface for selecting PHP installation.
  
  
• Added iPhone Simulator to supported preview browsers (requires iPhone SDK).
  
  
• Fixed a syntax check issue with image map coordinates.
  
  
• Fixed a text selection issue when using Code Completion at the end of a file.
  
  
• Download Internet Files is now enabled by default for Live Preview.
  
  
• Fix an issue introduced in version 2.0.1 where preview URLs would have an extra "/" character, preventing relative URLs from working correctly.
  
  
• Various bug fixes.

• Code Completion: While you are editing an HTML, CSS, or PHP document, Taco HTML Edit can now suggest completions for the text you are typing. This assists in helping you remember tag, attribute, and function names. Suggested completions include a brief description of the suggested item and a link to additional documentation.
  
  
• Code Coloring: In addition to HTML and PHP, Taco HTML Edit now supports coloring for CSS and JavaScript documents. Coloring is completely configurable, and CSS coloring includes "formal" and "functional" schemes that are available.
  
  
• Tabbed User Interface: Taco HTML Edit now supports a tabbed user interface for both projects and standalone documents. The traditional interfaces are still available through Preference options.
  
  
• Enhanced Find and Batch Find: Taco HTML Edit's Find Panels now support regular expressions. Regular Expressions may be simple, which allows the use of an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character; alternately, the full Ruby regular expression language is available by setting a Preference option. In addition, the Batch Find has been enhanced in several respects, including improved performance.
  
  
• Open Quickly: Open Quickly allows you find files by name, without needing to know what folder the file is located in. You can choose to search only currently open files and projects, or to search your entire disk for a file. An asterisk (*) can be used as a wildcard; for example, you could search for *.php to find all files that end with the "php" file extension. Full disk searching requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later with Spotlight indexing enabled. This feature is really useful! Make sure that you try it out!
  
  
• External Editor: Taco HTML Edit can now be used an an external editor for FTP clients. Please, contact the author of your favorite FTP client to make sure that Taco HTML Edit is available as an external editor.
  
  
• Finder Integration: Taco HTML Edit now supports drag-and-drop with the Finder in projects.
  
  
• Embedded Live Preview: Taco HTML Edit's Live Preview is now embedded into the document window. A separate window is no longer required.
  
  
• Automatic Updates: Taco HTML Edit can automatically check for updates, making sure that you have the latest features and fixes.
  
  

Taco HTML Edit 2 costs $24.95 USD per license, and can be downloaded from Taco Software's web site. A free 30-day trial is available.

The following screen shot illustrates what is happening:

I would like to start by mentioning that when I first discovered this problem, the only affected web page was www.tacosw.com. I then tried adding a permanent HTTP redirect to tacosw.com/index.php, and the result was the second spam result in the above image. Whoever is doing this is capable of adjusting quickly it would seem. The way I see it, there are two plausible scenarios for what is going on:

1. My web host (HostGator) is making money by inserting these terms as links into my web page when GoogleBot visits.
2. A spammer is taking advantage of a flaw in Google to modify search results

The first scenario can be eliminated as follows:

• Motive: HostGator would have little to gain and much to lose if it was doing this.
• Tests: I visited tacosw.com using the GoogleBot's user-agent, and no such spam links appeared
• The "www." prefix: The presence of the "www" prefix, when it probably should not be there, would indicate that this is the work of an outsider, not my own host.

From this, and in light of the previously described 302 exploit, I conclude that the second scenario describes what is happening. Someone is tricking Google to think that tacosw.com is linking to spam sites. This is presumably being done using HTTP somehow. The spammer wants to make it difficult to discover that this is going on, so it is leaving Taco Software's content intact, but just inserting spam links. The fortunate thing here is that Taco Software has not lost traffic because the spammer is leaving the content intact. However, Taco Sofware's PageRank on Google could ultimately be harmed if Google believes that Taco Software links to spam sites. Also, this could reflect badly on Taco Software if users discovered these strange terms seemingly appearing on our web pages.

If anyone can provide additional details about what is going on, or has advice about what I should do, feel free to send an email or post a comment. Your help is appreciated.

I ordered another book, Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming, which covers a little bit of everything as far as Mac OS X is concerned. It even has a couple chapters of C programming "refresher" that I desperately need (considering that I never have really learned a lot of the stuff in the first place). The book also includes information about CVS, compilers and debugging, exceptions and signals, and a bunch of other important-to-know things.