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Dear American Website Owner

jan.rychter.com

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Re: Dear American Website Owner

#71

Post by Semiapies »

cglee wrote: post #61
TomOfTTB wrote: post #16

Dear Foreigner, Okay it’s probably time to come clean. In reality the problem you highlight is all a secret plot to frustrate you and hence make you less effective and unable to compete with us in the global economy. We were all told to do so through coded messages that are embedded into episodes of American Idol (I bet you thought all that stuff Paula Abdul said was just drunken babbling) It’s all part of a far reac…

How does this reply add value? The blog post presents a problem that I (being an American) rarely even think about. I wanted to see how others deal with this issue. WTF is this reply doing?

This is what your downvote button is for.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#72

Post by elai »

njharman wrote: post #45

I've argued many times for making address one big text field. Let people who live in the country, who own the address, format it how they know it should be formatted.

Or you can just make the state field optional, add an address2 field, let zip codes be a free form string and phone-numbers a free form string. What cases would not be covered then?

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#73

Post by jamesbritt »

Deestan wrote: post #50
njharman wrote: post #45

I've argued many times for making address one big text field. Let people who live in the country, who own the address, format it how they know it should be formatted.

Me too! I've been arguing this for years, and I have yet for someone to reply with a good reason why it shouldn't be handled this way. Bad reasons given: - Safeguard against users who can't be relied on to format their own address properly. Fix 1: Don't worry about that. Fix 2: If you really want this, leave the rest of us an option to use a freeform address instead. - "Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Ch…

'"Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Change the database, then.'

Or let the app first sort out the raw input, make sure it makes sense, then pass it on to the database.

I can see wanting to have fine-grained table fields. But I don't like seeing the schema drive the model or the UI.

A single textarea really is a strong idea (and like others here have been advocating it fr a few years with mixed results).

Seems like these are the sort of mundane tasks computers should be good at. Let humans be quirky and let computers sort it out. Prompt for confirmation as needed.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#74

Post by ismarc »

awolf wrote: post #3

I wish author was a little more constructive here. What phone number pattern would he recommend we use?

E.164 format. Every valid number in the world can be represented. The downside is that most people don't even know that this exists, so when doing an international based system, you have a filter based on the country they user is based in and automatically apply any codes needed. Just strip everything out of the field that isn't a number and prepend the country code if the region doesn't normally include it. That means that 210-555-1212 would become 12105551212 for a U.S. number and 21-555-1212 would become 55215551212 for a Brazil number.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#75

Post by wvenable »

njharman wrote: post #45

I've argued many times for making address one big text field. Let people who live in the country, who own the address, format it how they know it should be formatted.

I recently made some parts of my web application worse in this regard in order to be compatible with more US payment processors and some regulations. I don't think I'll have a huge problem with international users yet, but if it needs more code to satisfy them then I'll add it when necessary.

Unfortunately, one big text field doesn't cut it when every other system you interact with requires separate fields.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#76

Post by dpifke »

Deestan wrote: post #50
njharman wrote: post #45

I've argued many times for making address one big text field. Let people who live in the country, who own the address, format it how they know it should be formatted.

Me too! I've been arguing this for years, and I have yet for someone to reply with a good reason why it shouldn't be handled this way. Bad reasons given: - Safeguard against users who can't be relied on to format their own address properly. Fix 1: Don't worry about that. Fix 2: If you really want this, leave the rest of us an option to use a freeform address instead. - "Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Ch…

"Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Change the database, then.

Much harder when the "database" belongs to a third party such as UPS or Paypal.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#77

Post by freiheit »

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.

Seems like in Britain the closest equivalent to US states is countries (England, Wales, Scotland). But countries within countries is just too danged confusing.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#78

Post by kpanghmc »

Deestan wrote: post #50
njharman wrote: post #45

I've argued many times for making address one big text field. Let people who live in the country, who own the address, format it how they know it should be formatted.

Me too! I've been arguing this for years, and I have yet for someone to reply with a good reason why it shouldn't be handled this way. Bad reasons given: - Safeguard against users who can't be relied on to format their own address properly. Fix 1: Don't worry about that. Fix 2: If you really want this, leave the rest of us an option to use a freeform address instead. - "Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Ch…

There are several legitimate reasons for requiring users to enter in their address in separate fields. The two main ones are:

1. If you need to integrate with third party systems who require you to break up the address. In case you've never tried, parsing addresses is very hard -- if not impossible -- depending on how many formats you need to support. All it takes is one third party library that requires you to break them up to make your life miserable.

2. If you need to categorize your users by country, state, zip, etc. For example, if you need to handle different tax laws for different states or if you need to generate reports on how many users you have from country XYZ.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#79

Post by gn »

cglee wrote: post #61
TomOfTTB wrote: post #16

Dear Foreigner, Okay it’s probably time to come clean. In reality the problem you highlight is all a secret plot to frustrate you and hence make you less effective and unable to compete with us in the global economy. We were all told to do so through coded messages that are embedded into episodes of American Idol (I bet you thought all that stuff Paula Abdul said was just drunken babbling) It’s all part of a far reac…

How does this reply add value? The blog post presents a problem that I (being an American) rarely even think about. I wanted to see how others deal with this issue. WTF is this reply doing?

The idea that people other than Americans are real consumers with real money to spend is inherently funny; the idea that it might make good business sense to not put gratuitous hurdles between them and your checkout is practically hysterical. It's not like the US has an external trade deficit larger than the GDP of Taiwan or anything.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#80

Post by freiheit »

joshfinnie wrote: post #46
dionidium wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of having a state field at all? Isn't there a unique mapping between zip code and state? No. Zip codes may cross state lines.

I am not sure that is completely true. I thought ZIP codes could not cross state lines (at least in the US). And after looking at them, I couldn't find any that were not unique.[ http://www.aggdata.com/free/zip-code ] Edit: Sorry, There are a few that cross state lines, when using the first two digits as the state code. However, each ZIP code is unique to a town; therefore, one could use it in the above scenario.

"Each ZIP code is unique to a town"? No, not really. Small towns without their own post office typically share a ZIP code with the closest city because that's where the post office that delivers their mail is.
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