Why is this shameful practice so common?
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Why is this shameful practice so common?
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Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#2I've often wondered this myself, however, I have also thought about it from the opposite angle.
There are many sites that give no instruction as to how we are supposed to enter our credit card info. One can assume two possibilities: 1) The programmer of the site was ready, willing and able to parse multiple input types and simply strip out spaces, dashes, etc, or 2) I'm going to enter my credit card number into this page in a fashion not expected by said programmer and my much coveted Scarface Special Edition DVD will never show up at my door...
Just tell me what format you want so I can have some peace of mind and not have to decide which method is the best.
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#3Prompting the user e.g. ("no spaces") is a nice cue of the same fashion as an asterisk (*) for required form fields - both reduce user frustration.
However, it would be nice to think that we could automagically correct spaces/dashes etc. in CC numbers and transition directly to a confirmation page.
I wonder if translation of CC numbers is verboten by any payment gateways?
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#4Prompting the user e.g. ("no spaces") is a nice cue of the same fashion as an asterisk (*) for required form fields - both reduce user frustration. However, it would be nice to think that we could automagically correct spaces/dashes etc. in CC numbers and transition directly to a confirmation page. I wonder if translation of CC numbers is verboten by any payment gateways?
The payment gateway software I've interfaced with is very specific about what formats it accepts. There's an xsd schema for it. Basically just numbers. The gateway still does a lot of validation and will throw all sorts of errors on insufficiently cleaned up data.
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#5Back when we were working on online shopping, this was always my litmus test for competence.
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#6Prompting the user e.g. ("no spaces") is a nice cue of the same fashion as an asterisk (*) for required form fields - both reduce user frustration. However, it would be nice to think that we could automagically correct spaces/dashes etc. in CC numbers and transition directly to a confirmation page. I wonder if translation of CC numbers is verboten by any payment gateways?
The payment gateway software I've interfaced with is very specific about what formats it accepts. There's an xsd schema for it. Basically just numbers. The gateway still does a lot of validation and will throw all sorts of errors on insufficiently cleaned up data.
But your application server can strip out spaces and dashes before you send the number to the gateway. Right?
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
The payment gateway software I've interfaced with is very specific about what formats it accepts. There's an xsd schema for it. Basically just numbers. The gateway still does a lot of validation and will throw all sorts of errors on insufficiently cleaned up data.
But your application server can strip out spaces and dashes before you send the number to the gateway. Right?
Of course - We do it.
Wondering if anyone uses a payment gateway which prohibits this..
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#8argh, this really bugs me, because there are spaces in the number on the card itself! i can't enter the number the way it's printed.
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#9I think it's just a case of programmers thinking like programmers and not like users. They think "I want this to not have numbers or spaces, so why would I let the user put in numbers and spaces?"
You see errors like that everywhere you look on the web, though much more at big corporations than at startups. Startups tend to eat their own dogfood, which greatly reduces that, though not entirely.
Re: Why is this shameful practice so common?
#10Back when we were working on online shopping, this was always my litmus test for competence.
This reminds me of that fizzbuzz thing. It's surprising how effective a low bar like that can be.