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Website mistakes that are easily fixed

hanselman.com

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Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#11

Post by thedufer »

zalew wrote: post #10

> There can be a whole list of languages in the Accept-Language header, in the order the user prefers them! Use that data, it's there for you to use. Yet it takes only jumping a plane for a few hours to get Google to think I can and want to read Georgian. Google's i18n for anonymous users (I'm not logged in on my phone's browser) is the most ridiculous I've experienced, every border I cross I get a different language…

I think that's the point. They're using IP geolocation when the article suggests that the Accept-Language header would be a better choice.

I don't know whether this is generally true, but it sounds like it would probably help your situation.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#12

Post by zalew »

thedufer wrote: post #11
zalew wrote: post #10

> There can be a whole list of languages in the Accept-Language header, in the order the user prefers them! Use that data, it's there for you to use. Yet it takes only jumping a plane for a few hours to get Google to think I can and want to read Georgian. Google's i18n for anonymous users (I'm not logged in on my phone's browser) is the most ridiculous I've experienced, every border I cross I get a different language…

I think that's the point. They're using IP geolocation when the article suggests that the Accept-Language header would be a better choice. I don't know whether this is generally true, but it sounds like it would probably help your situation.

> I think that's the point. They're using IP geolocation when the article suggests that the Accept-Language header would be a better choice.

That was my point :) If I set up us-en everywhere, don't try to be smarter and just show me everything in English.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#13

Post by 1morepassword »

zalew wrote: post #10

> There can be a whole list of languages in the Accept-Language header, in the order the user prefers them! Use that data, it's there for you to use. Yet it takes only jumping a plane for a few hours to get Google to think I can and want to read Georgian. Google's i18n for anonymous users (I'm not logged in on my phone's browser) is the most ridiculous I've experienced, every border I cross I get a different language…

Not just anonymous users. Even as a logged-in user with set preferences Google constantly knows better than you which language you want.

"Oh, so you did a local search for hardware stores in insert-country-here? Well, than let's change your default settings to insert-language-here, regardless of what you told us you wanted."

This nightmare grows exponentially if you're in a multilingual country.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#15

Post by hamburglar »

hobb0001 wrote: post #14

Regarding the title of his article, as a someone who routinely uses TCP/IP for tasks other than transmitting HTML, I find his concept of "internet" to be rather myopic.

I find it difficult to believe that you are actually bothered by web developers referring to what they work on as "the internet."

Can we please suppress the burning need to find something "wrong" to nitpick in every headline? I know it's really satisfying to be the HN Superstar that points out a blatant error, but sometimes it just makes you look desperate.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#16

Post by thisone »

zalew wrote: post #12
thedufer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the point. They're using IP geolocation when the article suggests that the Accept-Language header would be a better choice. I don't know whether this is generally true, but it sounds like it would probably help your situation.

> I think that's the point. They're using IP geolocation when the article suggests that the Accept-Language header would be a better choice. That was my point :) If I set up us-en everywhere, don't try to be smarter and just show me everything in English.

From my experience, Chrome installs default to en-US without trying to pick up language settings from your computer. (I'm probably doing it wrong)

Not an excuse, but it sounds like they don't trust accept-language to be correct.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#17

Post by durkie »

godamn credit card forms! those get me the most because we're at the moment where i'm trying to give you money, and they pull some passive-aggressive bullshit like limiting the field length to 16 characters.

i can almost type in my whole card number, but then i can go no further and i have to manually go back and remove all the spaces and then go to the end of the number and enter the last digit. class act.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#19

Post by Domenic_S »

apendleton wrote: post #8
yogo wrote: post #4

Asking for city, state and zip code is my favorite on the list. Plus the country should be asked for first then if US only get the street and zip code. There was a link on HN sometime ago that showed that people trusted the form/page more when complete address information was requested (I believe the conclusion was that people were used to doing it that way) so maybe there is a downside to the shorter version.

Funny. This is the one to which I had the most negative response. Zipcodes are terrible for inferring anything geographically interesting. A single zipcode is just a collection of USPS postal routes; nothing more, nothing less. They don't have to be contained within a single city, or even a single state, nor do they have to be contiguous, and they can overlap with one another. New ones are also added all the time, an…

ZIPs are almost always fine at a state granularity, and pretty good for cities. If the form is street/city/state/zip, you can autofill State correctly from ZIP 99.9% of the time.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#20

Post by Domenic_S »

Here's one he missed: your "country" dropdown has a list of every country in existence, alphabetically. So for the US you have to scroll down to near the end of the list past hundreds of other countries.

Instead, put your audience up top (Canada, US, GB maybe) and then alphabetically list the rest.

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