Please go and purchase this book and read it cover-to-cover.
Failing that, please familiarize yourself with some of the contents.
Failing that, please at least be aware that when you have a stringy thing, you can do stringy-type things to it.
Thanks and best regards,
The Internet-Using Public
It continually amazes me how awful some of the validation routines out there are, including ones that:
– Expect my phone number to be in a specific format (usually without telling me beforehand)
– Think that the character “+” is not valid in e-mail addresses
– Don’t let me put a space in my credit card number, even though it’s written that way on my card
– Ask me for my house number separately from my street, and then reject the fact that my house number ends in a “1/2”
Please: either do good validation or none at all. Don’t make me, say, order a $1000 lens from someone else because you don’t like my address.
Bingo! The reason for this post was a form that, without telling you beforehand, required you to enter the telephone number as ten digits with no spaces. Pretty natural, eh? If you had the temerity to enter 408) 123-4567, you got a big honking error screen.
But at least I was able to complete the form. It’s pretty amazing that developers will design forms that *force* users to go elsewhere. Aren’t shopping carts a solved problem?
It’s the whole “Not Invented Here” Syndrome.
“*We* didn’t develop it, why should we use a commonly referenced regex expression that builds on a common code base for a retailer that does something like we do? After all, the developers need some easy tickmarks on the project plan. Plus, what you’re talking about is “Site Design”‘s fault. They’re the ones who’re supposed to capture user requirements and site flow. *sniff*”
I think it’s also Contractor Syndrome. If they pulled some tried-and-true code off the shelf, they couldn’t charge their client for the time required to reinvent the same thing, badly.
Amen, brother. As an example – I love Gmail (I know, I know – I’m not supposed to say that to you), but it’s search functionality stinks.
What really gets me are airfare purchase sites that say, “Please enter your name EXACTLY AS IT READS ON YOUR CREDIT CARD,” but then says “No punctuation in the Last Name field” when I try to do so. I mean, which do they want? Hyphen-less, or Exactly As On Credit Card? And what unreasonably lazy-ass programmer said, “Let’s just limit this field to alphabetical characters because it’s too damn hard to allow hyphens, spaces, periods, and mixed case”?
Grrrrumph!
I have the same problem — my credit card says “R Michael Harman”, and NUMEROUS sites that demand my name exactly as on credit card then refuse to accept a space in first name or an actual middle name (rather than a single middle initial).
Idiots.
Russ — In Google’s defense, vertical search is really really hard.
Nikki and Auros — this is completely *your* fault for not choosing Internet-compliant names. *My* name:
* is only eight characters (thirteen with the middle name)
* has no funky punctuation
* includes a very rare last name, making sensible userIDs easy to come by
* is easy to remember (at Potlatch someone recognized me by connecting my nametag to a few rare posts I’ve made at Making Light)
My sisters have excellent names along these lines too. Are my parents awesome or what? The only downside is that on the phone, people who don’t know me personally often have trouble spelling my name correctly. But is that really a bug, or a feature?