Darwin's Theories Blog

New Theories for a New Time

What's wrong with the web, Part 43(b)

2008-07-19
Here's another example of a stupid web site problem that could have been easily avoided. I sent this to (name of web site) this morning; let's see if I get a response from this one.

Your Web Developers need to get with the "don't make me think" program! Trying to sign up for the first time, my account got locked just because I automatically put my phone number in STANDARD FORMAT whereas you say in tiny type that you want it without dashes. Come on, kiddies, how much work is it to remove dashes? In Java it's just inputString.replaceAll("[ ()-]", "")  (this also removes spaces and parenthesis, commonly used in standard form phone numbers). Presumably ColdFusion can't have made it any harder. Get with the "don't make me think" program throughout, and your web site will be a lot more usable.