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Dear American Website Owner

jan.rychter.com

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Re: Dear American Website Owner

#111

Post by Semiapies »

rohsh wrote: post #91
jwr wrote: post #65

I should probably clarify something, given how heated the discussion is becoming. I could have written the same thing as a nerdy techie article, pointing out flaws in input validation. Do you think this would have gotten my point across? How many people would have read that article? Would it have made it to Hacker News? Look: this is not a rant about Americans. It just so happens that US has developed most of the int…

I think on some level this is a rant about Americans, even if you didn't intend it to be one. My Indian and German friends are aware of the fact that not every country has states, even though their countries do. I would bet money on the same being true for Brazilians and Australians. I would bet money on Japanese people being aware of the fact that not every country is partitioned into prefectures. Maybe this is beca…

"My Indian and German friends are aware of the fact that not every country has states, even though their countries do"

Apparently not: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1232278

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#112

Post by bobbyi »

snitko wrote: post #6
awolf wrote: post #3

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

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

Because that's scary for users who have anxiety worrying they didn't input things correctly. If you tell them the phone number format and have a state dropdown, people rest easy knowing you will get their contact info correct.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#114

Post by Vivtek »

rohsh wrote: post #91
jwr wrote: post #65

I should probably clarify something, given how heated the discussion is becoming. I could have written the same thing as a nerdy techie article, pointing out flaws in input validation. Do you think this would have gotten my point across? How many people would have read that article? Would it have made it to Hacker News? Look: this is not a rant about Americans. It just so happens that US has developed most of the int…

I think on some level this is a rant about Americans, even if you didn't intend it to be one. My Indian and German friends are aware of the fact that not every country has states, even though their countries do. I would bet money on the same being true for Brazilians and Australians. I would bet money on Japanese people being aware of the fact that not every country is partitioned into prefectures. Maybe this is beca…

See my post elsewhere, and maybe your German friends aren't Web designers, but I've had problems with addresses on German forms - just because I speak German doesn't mean I live there. So this is a universal problem, not an American one: internationalization is hard, because there is a tremendous amount of domain-specific knowledge that is not convenient to find.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#115

Post by Vivtek »

brown9-2 wrote: post #109
Vivtek wrote: post #26

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.

Doesn't the author address this pretty directly? you should remove the State field if the country isn't set to U.S.A. or at least make it optional He doesn't say "Remove state completely".

I guess I should be more specific. This is an actual problem I've had on actual German sites.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#116

Post by kpanghmc »

WingForward wrote: post #94
kpanghmc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is parsing the addresses on the back end harder than providing the same number of support formats on the front end?

Parsing on the backend, even when only considering United States addresses is incredibly difficult and error prone. There are apartment numbers, rural routes, PO boxes, circles, streets named after compass directions (i.e. North, South, East, West), streets whose direction names appear before or after the street itself (e.g. N. Main St. vs Main St. N.), military addresses, and the list goes on and on.

It's a terrible system really, and the only solution that I've been able to rely upon is having the user parse their own address and supply it to me. At least that way I don't have to spend hours looking through regex statements and edge case detection logic to figure out why a street address was parsed in a particular way.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#117

Post by Semiapies »

Vivtek wrote: post #24
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?

An interesting point about tone.

If this had been pitched as "sites do international addresses wrong" as opposed to "Americans do it wrong!", there'd probably be less defensiveness, less snideness, less "typical American can't read", etc.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#118

Post by compay »

rohsh wrote: post #91
jwr wrote: post #65

I should probably clarify something, given how heated the discussion is becoming. I could have written the same thing as a nerdy techie article, pointing out flaws in input validation. Do you think this would have gotten my point across? How many people would have read that article? Would it have made it to Hacker News? Look: this is not a rant about Americans. It just so happens that US has developed most of the int…

I think on some level this is a rant about Americans, even if you didn't intend it to be one. My Indian and German friends are aware of the fact that not every country has states, even though their countries do. I would bet money on the same being true for Brazilians and Australians. I would bet money on Japanese people being aware of the fact that not every country is partitioned into prefectures. Maybe this is beca…

Brazilian websites are just as bad, if not worse than American ones about this, probably because websites that do online sales in Brazil tend to cater to a primarily domestic clientele. If you happen to live in Argentina, as I do, entering your address when you buy things in Brazil can be comically frustrating.

Americans definitely don't have a monopoly on ignorance when it comes to other countries' address formats.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#119

Post by nkassis »

I've had that issue with a Department of Education website, I moved to Canada for a second degree recently and I was unable to set my address with them to here because of the state field not resetting when I select Canada.

I agree with this article, if you set a country other than USA, the state field should go away or better, don't preselect the US and add the field later.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#120

Post by arvinjoar »

Vivtek wrote: post #115
brown9-2 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the author address this pretty directly? you should remove the State field if the country isn't set to U.S.A. or at least make it optional He doesn't say "Remove state completely".

I guess I should be more specific. This is an actual problem I've had on actual German sites.

What exactly were you buying from Germany that you couldn't find in the USA? Oh... I see...
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