Subject: Re: [thelist] how design affects ecommerce

Nicole Parrot nicole at parrot.ca
Sat Jan 12 18:21:16 CST 2002


On a similar note, I had to deal with a clueless website developer
He wrote a form that he claimed was very idiot-proof and spam-proof and much
better than the forms I had coded for the same project, at least as far as
validation was concerned.

One of the fields in the form had to do with email addresses. He was
validating for .com, .org, and .net EXCLUSIVELY, thus refusing all emails
from Canada (mine) and other countries, not to mention the US military, and
the US government. And yes, the target audience for the form is/was
worldwide. And to think that he was proud of it... sigh...

<tip author=nicole>
Don't over-validate your forms. Someone somewhere will have valid data that
does not fit into your validation function.  Phone numbers, addresses, even
names can vary wildly from one area of the world to another.
</tip>


----- Original Message -----
From: "Shoshannah Forbes" <xslf at xslf.com>

> 1st stage: choose domain or choose "transfer domain".
> Obviosly, we choose the 2nd option.
> Then, enter a phone number. Should be easy. Nope.
> The form accepts (via "maxlength") phone numbers only in the following
(US)
> format:
> xxx- xxx- xxxx
> 10 digits totall.
> however, being in France, our phone number is:
> 33 4 xx xx xx xx
> 11 digits totall.
> Oopps.







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