Less usable forms



  • A coworker of mine in sales came by the other day as she was trying to register for a conference.  She couldn't submit the form due to some "strange error" and so she asked me to see if I could get it working.  The form is on this page: https://ccdeconference.usask.ca/index.aspx?cid=37 

    I guess the in thing now is to ask you to submit each step of a form even though it is all on the same page.  Because, you know, going back and changing a field should require clicking extra Edit buttons.  And if you stop at any point at least the server will have your partial information!

    Running the page with Firebug open shows that each button to move on to the next field fires off several AJAX requests, some of which return chunks of HTML, some of which return JSON data.  Once you get down to enter your address, you get a JS error in an alert and cannot continue (which is why my coworker asked for help). Even clicking on the radio buttons to select your item triggers AJAX.

    Another WTF includes asking for one of the address types:

    • Mailing
    • Home
    • Business
    • Home Stay
    • Administrative
    • Local

    Aside from personal vs business, who knows why they would need to know if you are "home stay".  I can only guess that maybe "local" refers to an inter-department mail at that university...

    We tried FF, Chrome, and IE with no luck.  I told my coworker to call them and tell them that their form doesn't work (with of course no clear contact info for anyone on their site at the time. They added a big notice with a phone number now).  So it's the good old CC number over the phone that saves the day.


    I miss the plain HTML form with all of fields laid out on one page and one button submit at the bottom.




  • I also liked this granny-friendly help at the bottom of the page;

    Note: If you can not see the payment options your browser might not be displaying iframes and you need to upgrade to a newer version

    I guess my granny could just google for "browser with new, improved iframes"



  • The only real link she'd get is this page, but Google helpfully offers Chrome, so that might work :p



  • @Ill Stew said:

    The only real link she'd get is this page
    Hi Grandma!!
    \


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