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Dear American Website Owner

jan.rychter.com

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Re: Dear American Website Owner

#51

Post by showerst »

vital101 wrote: post #36
lutorm wrote: post #32

What's the point of having a state field at all? Isn't there a unique mapping between zip code and state? About the phone numbers, my favorite annoyance is when companies, who always are fond of making stupid mnemonics out of the letters corresponding to their phone number, don't let me enter my mnemonic for my phone number, which I picked from Google Voice specifically because it makes my name, but insists on number…

You could probably do without city as well if using zip codes. Obviously this doesn't hold water for international setups, but it could be nice for the US.

Unfortunately, no, you can't.

There are plenty of zip codes in Missouri that have a dozen small towns that all have 1001 Broadway as valid addresses.

There are at least 5 zip codes (possibly more, there used to be a list on wiki) that cross state, county, and city boundaries. So it's entirely possible that without the zip+4, you'd have to have both the city and the state to correctly locate an address.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#52

Post by petercooper »

Vivtek wrote: post #25
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…

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?

"State" is really just equivalent to "second-level subdivision" (a bit like how "ZIP code" can mean "postal code" in general, as long as the box allows freeform input). Most countries don't call their second-level subdivisions "states" but counties, municipalities, council areas, and the like. Puerto Rico has municipalities and Japan has prefectures, for instance.

the other areas of the world that the US Postal Service (and law) considers part of the United States?

The places you mention are all unincorporated organized territories, meaning they are not considered to be "part of the United States proper." The word "proper" is somewhat important in this distinction, of course, and the USPS's definitions do nothing to help clear the waters on this one.. :-)

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#53

Post by zeeone »

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.

Which would make so much more sense in the first place. I don't even know why did they make them in separate fields in the first place. To give you a huge listbox of all states to choose from?! Oh, wow!

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#54

Post by mooism2 »

Timmy_C wrote: post #42
Tycho wrote: post #40

And fix those drop-down menus for country where I have to scroll allllll....the.....waaaaay....dowwwwwwn to reach United Kingdom!

If it's an HTML element then you can click it to give it focus then start typing the name of option you wish to select.

But it would be easier for the customer if the website guessed from the customer's IP address which country they were in, and put it at the top of the list (as well as in its normal position).

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#55

Post by zeeone »

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…

The only reason I can think of is for internal statistics. For example the website owner can run a report on their customers broken down by a state or country. Nowadays with GeoIP, this is obsolete.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#56

Post by jwr »

Timmy_C wrote: post #27

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 h…

If I wanted to write a blog post which elaborated on all possible internationalization issues, it would become a PhD dissertation and take a year to write.

And then it wouldn't even touch on all the issues.

You have to start somewhere — and let's face it, dealing with the two silly problems I mentioned would get us 80% of the way there.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#57

Post by jwr »

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.

Absolutely — which is I would recommend providing multi-line edit boxes for addresses.

That way you can enter your address any way you see fit. You really know best how to address mail so that it gets to you, why would I want to pretend I know better?

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#58

Post by showerst »

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.

Wikipedia used to have a list of them, I remember there being at least 5, possibly more.

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#59

Post by jwr »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #8
awolf wrote: post #3

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

Probably the best approach is not using any pattern at all. The less you force your users into something that will not work most of the times, the best. I always struggle to input information even in forms designed specifically for my country. Just let people enter numbers with all the spaces and the dashes the wish. After all, if a human will ever need a phone number, he will be able to read it in any form. If these…

Exactly.

And note that if you overzealously validate, you'll get garbage data anyway. What do you think I enter as a phone number if I can't enter my number at all?

Re: Dear American Website Owner

#60

Post by detst »

vital101 wrote: post #36
lutorm wrote: post #32

What's the point of having a state field at all? Isn't there a unique mapping between zip code and state? About the phone numbers, my favorite annoyance is when companies, who always are fond of making stupid mnemonics out of the letters corresponding to their phone number, don't let me enter my mnemonic for my phone number, which I picked from Google Voice specifically because it makes my name, but insists on number…

You could probably do without city as well if using zip codes. Obviously this doesn't hold water for international setups, but it could be nice for the US.

Until the wrong zip code is written or it's illegible. They go to great lengths to deliver mail that is damaged, incorrect, etc. and not having this extra information would end up being too expensive to continue this practice. They would have to say "get it right or we throw it out".
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