"See how you typed 5 numbers and three fields filled themselves in?"
Nope! Didn't see that. Seems the zip code registry doesn't have a number of German zip codes.
Put the zip code first
61–70 of 330 posts
Re: Put the zip code first
#62US-centric. I typed a Mexico postal code (it’s five digits) and got routed to somewhere in Maine. So - yeah the whole “I can tell you’re in the US just by the zip code” premise is entirely flawed.
The best times are when US ecommerce sites try to confidently lint foreign addresses, even when they allow shipping there.
I've had them tell me I need 5 digits for my postal code in Norway, which uses 4 digits. I selected Norway in the shipping web form.
Or when they tell me special characters aren't allowed, yet the "special characters" are just letters in the Norwegian alphabet. My address contains ø. These aren't even unicode, they're in the extended 8 bit ascii set. Why are you linting these!?
These happen all the time. Thankfully our postal system recognises this and allows some substitutions (å=aa, ø=oe, æ=ae).
Re: Put the zip code first
#63US-centric. I typed a Mexico postal code (it’s five digits) and got routed to somewhere in Maine. So - yeah the whole “I can tell you’re in the US just by the zip code” premise is entirely flawed.
Yup. I typed my French ZIP code (code postal) and this guessed a US city...
But the author has a point. Combine it with some approximate country-level geolocate of the web client and this would work perfectly 99% of the time modulo edge cases like VPN users.
Re: Put the zip code first
#64I wish I could downvote this. Please don’t do this folks. Editing “guessed” filled inputs when they’re incorrect is a higher UX bar of effort than browser autofill or even just typing it (especially on mobile). Plus a non-zero number of users will just not correct or be confused and abandon.
Re: Put the zip code first
#65Why don't we learn and use our (short) plus code?
That would have all the desired properties and then some, and would work everywhere on Earth.
Re: Put the zip code first
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously put country first, then whatever the equivalent of a ZIP code is second. In the UK, a post code gets you down to around 15-16 delivery addresses on average. No-one there really _ever_ needs to type an address.
“Obviously” didn’t read the article. Not having to pick the country is literally the premise! “I type 90210. You now know I'm in Beverly Hills, California, United States. You didn't need me to tell you that. You didn't need a dropdown. You didn't need me to scroll past Turkmenistan.”
"Obviously" the article is wrong, as pointed out by the grandparent of your comment (and several others in the comments). I won't violate the site guidelines by suggesting you didn't read it.
Re: Put the zip code first
#67US-centric. I typed a Mexico postal code (it’s five digits) and got routed to somewhere in Maine. So - yeah the whole “I can tell you’re in the US just by the zip code” premise is entirely flawed.
The best times are when US ecommerce sites try to confidently lint foreign addresses, even when they allow shipping there. I've had them tell me I need 5 digits for my postal code in Norway, which uses 4 digits. I selected Norway in the shipping web form. Or when they tell me special characters aren't allowed, yet the "special characters" are just letters in the Norwegian alphabet. My address contains ø. These aren't…
I remember US based sites insisting I provide them a post code for like a decade before most of my country _had_ post codes.
Re: Put the zip code first
#68This works really well in Ireland. Eircodes (our late adoption postal codes) resolve to individual addresses rather than areas, so Irish sites mostly do this.
Re: Put the zip code first
#69> From those 5 characters you can determine the city, the state, and the country False. Many zip codes include more than one city, and some even cross multiple states. And you can't always tell the difference between codes from different countries. Now you're not just instantly filling the rest of the form, you're implementing fancy multi-country filtering logic, editable drop downs, etc. Given the obvious incompeten…
This 1000 times. I’ve tried implementing what OP has mentioned, and quickly learned it isn’t possible. A city can also exist in multiple zip codes. And there can be multiple cities with the same name in the same state. So, to be safe, you have to enter city, state, and zip.
Re: Put the zip code first
#70[deleted]