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Dear American Website Owner

jan.rychter.com

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Re: Dear American Website Owner

#21

Post by spatulon »

Major_Grooves wrote: post #13

It can happen within countries too. Most UK websites will require you to enter a "county". That's fine in England, because England is divided in to lots of counties (e.g. Essex, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire etc.). However, Scotland does not have counties any more. They were abolished before I was even born and replaced with regions. It might sound nit-picking, but it's one of these things that adds to the chip on our s…

FWIW, not all parts of England are in counties either, so don't feel like you're being singled out. York isn't in Yorkshire, for example. It is its own unitary authority. Even Amazon demands a county, so I put North Yorkshire. Close enough.

The Royal Mail are happy for old curmudgeons and the like to use traditional counties in addresses, if they wish: http://www.abcounties.co.uk/bpa/bpacontents.htm

All that Royal Mail cares about is your house number and postcode, so you could probably even get away with telling websites that you live in Wibbleton in Foobarshire.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#23

Post by Vivtek »

sigzero wrote: post #17
snitko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use any pattern? Let me enter the phone number in a way I got used to it and deal with it.

Ummm...no. Do you not see the problem with that reasoning?

What, the whole "being able to place an order even if you're not American" thing?

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#24

Post by Vivtek »

edw519 wrote: post #12

Dear Non-American Website User: You do not live in the United States of America. You think all American website owners are the same. And then you decide it might just be a good idea to lump the 95.4% who know what they're doing with those who don't. But you know, most American website owners are no more alike that most American . The moment you whine about the few to the many in a blog, two things do happen: - you ir…

Do you respond to other general advice to Website operators in the same way, or just to foreigners telling Americans what to do?

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#25

Post by Vivtek »

petercooper wrote: post #15

all of which required me to provide a "State" name (I don't have one) As the author is in Poland, I'd argue that voivodeships are equivalent, in terms of being the highest level subdivision of the country. As a Brit, I'd tend to go with the county instead.

How about Puerto Rico (in those cases where Puerto Rico is listed as a country instead of a state-like entity, which is how the US Postal Service treats it)? Hungary? Japan? Germany? Anywhere else that doesn't use a state in the postal address?

Edit on second thought: how about the vast majority of forms of this nature, which have a helpful dropdown list of the fifty valid states, and sometimes DC for the District of Columbia, but almost never PR for Puerto Rico, let alone Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the other areas of the world that the US Postal Service (and law) considers part of the United States?

I lived in Puerto Rico for years, and this is an utterly rampant problem for millions of actual American citizens living in the United States, let alone the rest of the world, all due to the fact that most Americans don't know jack about the world they inhabit.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#26

Post by Vivtek »

Dear German Website Owner

(yeah, this works both ways)

I do have a state in my postal address, and if I have to enter my address as 47374 Richmond instead of Richmond IN 47374, it will probably go to Virginia first, and maybe they'll get it to me eventually.

Just saying. Internationalism is hard. If you want to go for the global market, it would behoove you to try to do it right.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#27

Post by Timmy_C »

I think this blog post REALLY overlooks the fact that interface localization isn't easy; even with a simple web forms.

The interface for a search engine is a single input field with dynamic suggestions and people were in an uproar when Bing didn't give suggestions that were localized to the user's country or language. That's to say, if one of the biggest software companies in the world can't get it right, then what hope does the average web developer have?

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#28

Post by cwbrandsma »

Actually, as a web site owner, for a number of my sites, they are INTENTIONALLY USA only. Sorry that you happened to stumble across them, but I either do not care about your business, don't want to deal with the hassle (international shipped, phone, regulations, etc), or legally cannot serve your area.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#29

Post by whyenot »

sigzero wrote: post #17
snitko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use any pattern? Let me enter the phone number in a way I got used to it and deal with it.

Ummm...no. Do you not see the problem with that reasoning?

I'm not snitko, but I don't see the problem. Could you please explain your reasoning?

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#30

Post by Vivtek »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #28

Actually, as a web site owner, for a number of my sites, they are INTENTIONALLY USA only. Sorry that you happened to stumble across them, but I either do not care about your business, don't want to deal with the hassle (international shipped, phone, regulations, etc), or legally cannot serve your area.

I'm pretty sure this criticism is not leveled at your sites, which doubtlessly have nowhere to enter a country, either. But if they have a space for your country but don't make it possible to enter foreign addresses, which is very often the case, then the operator has a problem and should probably think a little harder about their data structures and form layout.
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