• (cs) in reply to DWalker

    I didn't put all those trailing blank lines in that post.  Weird.

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker

    There are way too many sucky sites out there that don't accept perfectly valid data. For example:

    • My wife has a lot of problems using her ".name" email address on major web sites, such as banks.
    • And our address is something like "12345 Avenue 14 1/2", (that's fourteen and a half), which gets rejected for containing invalid characters.

    And just to remain on topic, both my wife and I have names shorter than 5 characters.

     

  • Andy (unregistered)

    Looks like you might have shamed Aivea into fixing the validation problem.
    I just tried the short form of my name and it passed validation.

  • jeffchase (unregistered) in reply to Andy

    I don't see any problems. they have a pretty good e-commerce product, check out the demo at http://www.aivea.com/eshopinfo.htm

  • (cs) in reply to jeffchase
    Anonymous:
    I don't see any problems. they have a pretty good e-commerce product, check out the demo at http://www.aivea.com/eshopinfo.htm

    Really? Dig a little deeper, it's got a lot of annoyances in it...

    First, slow as fsck ;O) Hopefully it runs faster for real. On the "Normal Checkout" (what is normal besides a cycle on a washing machine). A single field for name, no validation checks. Instead of using DHTML to refresh individual fields it refreshes the whole page, which combined with it's slowness, is a major WTF...I had entered four more fields of data before the page disappeared to be refreshed with one containing the list of US states...which means i had to re-enter those fields. There are a couple more places where it does refreshes from the server.

    No postal code verification (15237 belongs in Pittsburgh, PA, not Illinois). Not a lot of validation on any fields...I guess abcdefg is a valid phone number. It did at least catch an email without an @ symbol. No credit card validation, not even a server-side mod10 check. CVV can be whatever you want it to be.

    I wouldn't pay more than nickel for their software. Monkeys the day after a six-day bender could have done a better job. We can prove it, if you've got the monkeys I've got the booze.

  • vhawk (unregistered)

    This form of form entry validation is about as irritating as the ever present select a State and 5 character zip code.  I love selecting a state at random if they insist though.  There are some countries with 4 number zip codes and some like Canada & the UK that has longer Alpha-Numeric zip codes.  Makes on feel like doing a CD or CDA

  • Raw (unregistered) in reply to bat
    bat:
    Western Sahara?  Is that a country or a region?

    Actually, it is a country. Just south of Morocco if my memory serves me well.

    As for formats of adresses, phone numbers, car licence numbers and so on, it is a common mistake to assume that your own country is the norm.

    Adresses are written very differently.

    Phone numbers are completely different, some countries does not have area codes or fixed length numbers, in some countries the question of alphanumeric phone numbers is currently discussed.

    Car plates have different formats, vanity plates may or may not be allowed, they may or may not be unique (all cars belonging to certain people may have the same number) and in some countries even the colour of the plate is part of the number (white=private vihicle, green=taxi, red=government, black=military and so on and there may be number overlaps between the colours).

    I've had to kick enormous amounts of butt at work (too often without success) to get people to understand that they have to look beyond their own adress, their own phone number, their own license plate to understand how it should be described.

  • Anil (unregistered) in reply to Raw

    Looks like they have changed their validation.. (which is still a WTF)

     
    if (theForm.First_Name.value == "")
      {
        alert("Please enter a value for the "First Name" field.");
        theForm.First_Name.focus();
        return (false);
      }

      if (theForm.First_Name.value.length < 2)
      {
        alert("Please enter at least 2 characters in the "First Name" field.");
        theForm.First_Name.focus();
        return (false);
      }

      if (theForm.First_Name.value.length > 80)
      {
        alert("Please enter at most 80 characters in the "First Name" field.");
        theForm.First_Name.focus();
        return (false);



    Now they assume that the name has to have at least two characters (which is not true in many parts of the world), and the 
     if (theForm.First_Name.value == "") validation they do is another WTF.


  • (cs) in reply to Anil
    Anonymous:
    Looks like they have changed their validation.. (which is still a WTF)

     
      if (theForm.First_Name.value.length < 2)
      {
      }



    Now they assume that the name has to have at least two characters

     

    x < 2 would be one character, not two, Which would seem fairly reasonable to me - Unless of course a culture exists where it is possible to have no first name at all....

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker

    DWalker:
    I didn't put all those trailing blank lines in that post.  Weird.

    Alex put that in so that the first post on a page would always be longer than the advert next to it... It's stops people thinking there is only one post on the page, but they scroll down to see what follows [:)]

    Drak

  • deepspace (unregistered)

    The read WTF here is of course the bad quality of the screenshot... Damn, have you neverheard of PNG?

  • ak (unregistered) in reply to travisowens

    So, what's the corresponding long name for "Anna" then? :-P

  • F8less (unregistered) in reply to ak

    Anonymous:
    So, what's the corresponding long name for "Anna" then? :-P

    That would be Annabel (well at least here in The Netherlands).

  • Mike (unregistered)

    I recall a similar conversation with a customer some years ago. The customer was a programmer with a long history in the business, used to working with minis and mainframes. He reported a problem that I couldn't think of an answer to, and I mentioned to him that I was sure it was a problem I'd seen, and that if I was sitting next to his screen, the penny might have dropped. "Shall I take a dump and send it to you?" was his next offer. I considered this a little harsh as I was doing my best to help.

  • (cs) in reply to Grimoire
    Grimoire:
    But what gets me, is that they check for no entry AND a small entry.

    IMO nothing wrong about it (if the "small entry" check was sane). If a user can make two different kinds of mistakes, there should be an appropriate error message for each kind of mistake, even if one mistake can be handled as special case of the other in the program.
    To a common person, "too small" is not the same thing as "not given". Error messages - like any other kind of user interface  - shall be made for the common user, not for someone who thinks like a programmer.
  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ

    Their admin software works pretty well.  I just clicked "DISABLE" on the administrator account to see what it did... it locked me out.  That's cool, I guess (for a demo site).

  • (cs)

    When working with a company in my past that had an AS/400, we noticed a column name in one of their tables that was for some sort of unit of shipping named "FVCUNT."  I'm not sure what the FVC stood for, but UNT stood for "unit."  [B]

    I guess when you're limited to 8 characters in the field name and the names must be unique across all tables (according to one of the AS/400 programmers, I'm not sure if that's accurate), you have to be creative.  ;)

    Mike

  • Sam (unregistered) in reply to travisowens

    Carl?

    Guy?

    Lois?

    I don't think this rule even works assuming all names are short for "full names"

  • lylesmith (unregistered) in reply to Sam

    >> Their admin software works pretty well.  I just clicked "DISABLE" on the administrator account to see what it did... it locked me out.  That's cool, I guess (for a demo site).

    Yes, looks like the database is cleaned up every couple of hours. seems to me that they are giving a full demo ( not disabling any features ) to the public & restore the db to a clean state every couple of hours. The software has ton of features for $295.00 compared all the crappy e-commerce software out there ... WTF with http://www.storefront.net .. eShop ( http://www.aivea.com/eshopinfo.htm ) is far far better that this http://www.storefront.net WTF.. i'm going to recommend eShop to some of my clients ...
    [Y]

  • Sam (unregistered)

    Notice that you'd also better not have a hyphenated last name (or spaces!), and you'll also want to avoid having names like "O'Connor".

     

      var checkOK = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzƒŠŒŽšœžŸÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýþÿ";
      var checkStr = theForm.LastName.value;
      var allValid = true;
      var validGroups = true;
      for (i = 0;  i < checkStr.length;  i++)
      {
        ch = checkStr.charAt(i);
        for (j = 0;  j < checkOK.length;  j++)
          if (ch == checkOK.charAt(j))
            break;
        if (j == checkOK.length)
        {
          allValid = false;
          break;
        }
      }
      if (!allValid)
      {
        alert("Please enter only letter characters in the \"Last Name\" field.");
        theForm.LastName.focus();
        return (false);
      }

  • OneFactor (unregistered) in reply to Sam

    Carl = Carlos
    Guy = SonicBoom or RazorKick
    Lois = SuperLameGirlfriend

  • Csaboka (unregistered)

    My first name is Csaba. Whew, that was close... :D

  • (cs)

    Speaking of stupid name checks, my wife tried to book a driving theory test online today. When we married she adopted a hyphenated surname. However, the web form won't accept a hyphen in the surname field!

  • (cs) in reply to Drak
  • (cs) in reply to Ben Hutchings

    When we married she adopted a hyphenated surname

    Looks like the stupid name check worked correctly...

  • Z (unregistered) in reply to Raw
    Anonymous:
    bat:
    Western Sahara?  Is that a country or a region?

    Actually, it is a country. Just south of Morocco if my memory serves me well.



    Actually, it is not clear that it is a sovereign country. It is partly annexed by Morocco, see http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/wi.html for more information.

  • Z (unregistered) in reply to Miszou
    Miszou:

    Unless of course a culture exists where it is possible to have no first name at all....


    There are such cultures, and it is not only webforms that have trouble handlign those people. Most (goverment) forms also assume that you have at least two names. A common "solution" is to double the single name so that it is used both as first and last name
  • (cs) in reply to Ben Hutchings
    Ben Hutchings:
    I know someone with no first name.

    As do I, as it happens. A person known simply yet officially only as Teddy.

    Thank goodness that's not a letter less.

  • (cs) in reply to ak
    Anonymous:
    So, what's the corresponding long name for "Anna" then? :-P


    /// <summary>
    /// Retrieves long version of Anna's name.
    /// </summary>
    public string LongName
    {
        get { return this._longNameGenerator.Generate(); }
    }
  • (cs) in reply to Ben Hutchings
    Ben Hutchings:
    He can always try "Wookie Nookie"
  • (cs) in reply to vhawk
    Anonymous:
    This form of form entry validation is about as irritating as the ever present select a State and 5 character zip code.  I love selecting a state at random if they insist though.  There are some countries with 4 number zip codes and some like Canada & the UK that has longer Alpha-Numeric zip codes.

    Even better than that, some countries have no postal codes (Ireland, for example.)  Forcing "correct" address formats can be risky - it might make your shipping system easier, but it can make the address wrong.  In many continential European countries, for instance, the house number goes after the road name and the postal code goes before the city/town.  And then there are the addresses which are just plain odd - I know of an entire hamlet that has no house numbers and no road names...
  • Anil (unregistered) in reply to Miszou
    ..would be one character, not two, Which would seem fairly reasonable to me - Unless of course a culture exists where it is possible to have no first name at all....

    Umm.. read that more carefully... if you have one character, they return an error message. That's an assumption that your first name has at least two characters.
  • megulrich (unregistered) in reply to Anil

    nope ... I don't see any issues at www.aivea.com or any of the contact pages. they seem to be a Microsoft.NET dev. firm...couple of E-Com/Biz products & services!

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker

    DWalker:
    I had a classmate whose first name was U.   Just the letter U.  He wasn't American, not that that matters.

    I had a classmate whose surname was U. Just the letter U. (Cambodian, I think). The temptation to call him "hey, you" was overbearing. He couldn't get a credit card with only one letter in his surname so he used "UU".

    If your friend married my friend his name would be U U.

  • (cs) in reply to strongarm
    strongarm:
    Monkeys the day after a six-day bender could have done a better job. We can prove it, if you've got the monkeys I've got the booze.


    Maybe you need to talk to Primate Programming Inc
  • (cs) in reply to Charles Nadolski

    Charles Nadolski:
    strongarm:
    Monkeys the day after a six-day bender could have done a better job. We can prove it, if you've got the monkeys I've got the booze.


    Maybe you need to talk to Primate Programming Inc

    Is this company for real? [:|]

  • (cs) in reply to Robz
    Robz:

    Charles Nadolski:
    strongarm:
    Monkeys the day after a six-day bender could have done a better job. We can prove it, if you've got the monkeys I've got the booze.


    Maybe you need to talk to Primate Programming Inc

    Is this company for real? [:|]

    Nevermind... lol

     

  • Hans (unregistered) in reply to christoofar
    christoofar:
    Ok... the 5 letter rule wouldn't work for:
    Max  (not always 'Maximillian')
    Amy (uhm... ?)
    Jack
    Hank
    Paul


    Don't forget the many thousands with the name Hans, just like me. ;)

    Pure discrimination.
  • Toby (UK) (unregistered) in reply to Hans

    he he ... 'dump'

    I used to work for a company whose COBOL based system (coded in the US) used four to six letter acronyms for shortcutting to functionality in the system.  There were two letters  for the 'top level' of the system (i.e. SA for store accounting, PR for payroll etc.) and then 2 to 4 letters for the command, so you would get commands like SADD or PRPP.

    Anyway, one upgrade it eventually happened ... Accounts Receivable Store Entry ..... oh how we laughed.

    (that might not have been the exact command description but the acronym is correct ... you get the idea) :D

  • csrster (unregistered) in reply to DWalker

    Did he become General Secretary of the United Nations?

  • Chesterfield A. Hustlesmith II (unregistered)

    You wouldn't believe how often my last name is rejected by software. Take for example "St. Marie", the software says... no periods, alright, I can live with "St Marie" -- but oh wait, no spaces... what am I left with?

  • CAhrens (unregistered)

    Good thing they fixed, otherwise Jet Li would have some problems with it...

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