Login issues



  • I work in the MIS department of a medium sized company, and one of my ongoing projects is an ASP.NET web app used by a number of companies.  Despite the availability of a variety of lengthy user guide documents, I still receive a number of phone calls from companies.  Usually I don't mind - sitting at my desk all day, it's nice to hear a human voice from time to time, the questions are usually simple, and the people polite.  However there's one phone number that, when it appears on my caller ID (and it does, quite regularly), strikes dread into my heart.  Let's call my nemesis "Joanne," at the top of the chain of command for two companies.

    I'm fairly certain that Joanne's existence is a WTF in and of itself.  I really believe she would have a difficult time figuring out a ball point pen if the cap were on it, and thus can't begin to imagine her performing ongoing Life Maintenance Routines, such as regularly placing food into her mouth and not asphyxiating it (sorry, did that sound too hopeful?).  There are just too many stories, so I'll start with the latest.

    An updated version of my web app was rolled out one morning a week or so ago.  A couple of hours after business had opened for the day, it looked like a smooth rollout. Until my phone began to ring from The Number.  Against my better judgment, I picked up the phone, and the following ensued:

    Joanne: Is the site down?  I can't get logged in at all.

    Me: Not that I'm aware of, looks good on this end.  

    Joanne: I've tried county A, I've tried county B, I've tried county A as a subcontractor, I can't get logged in to ANY of them!  I almost didn't call you because I figured you're too busy trying to fix it.

    Me: (quickly logging in as county A, county B, and county A subcontractor) The logins for your counties appear to be working fine.  

    Joanne: Fine!  I guess I'll just re-set my passwords, even though I DIDN'T forget my passwords, and maybe that will fix it.  I checked Caps Lock and everything.

    Me: Well, are you actually getting an invalid password error message?

    Joanne: No.

    Me: Then it's not likely to be your password that's the problem.  What DOES happen when you click Login?

    Joanne: Oh, I never do that. 

    Me: Sorry, say again?

    Joanne:  I don't click the button.  I hit enter.

    Me: Could you do me a big favor and try clicking the login button?

    Joanne: Hmm...ummm...oh!  It looks like that fixed it.   

    Yes folks, she called long distance, after apparent deliberation, for the kind of "fix" that only a programmer (or child over the age of 5 from an industrialized nation) could possibly offer.  And before you ask...even I gave her the benefit of the doubt for a minute that maybe the tab order on the page had changed.  But nope, the login screen hasn't been touched in 8 months.  WTF?

     



  •  TRWTF is hitting enter didn't fire the login button...



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

     TRWTF is hitting enter didn't fire the login button...

    Eh, that's a minor annoyance, but anybody who has used a computer for more than a day should probably be able to figure out the concept of "clicking a submit button".  Now, if she asked for the enter key to log her in as a feature request, that would be completely reasonable. 



  • I always hit enter too when I can, which is 99% of the time. Why should I have to take my hand off the keyboard and grab a mouse to click a button? Seriously ... why?



  • @medialint said:

    I always hit enter too when I can, which is 99% of the time. Why should I have to take my hand off my crotch and grab a mouse to click a button? Seriously ... why?
     

    FTFY



  •  Only when I'm looking at pictures of you gorgeous ...



  • Oh, rest assured that Enter does submit the form, or at least it does for me and every other user except "Joanne."  It's just that, at that point in the conversation, the hemmorage in my Logic Center was drawing too many resources from my Customer Service Center to even open up that topic with her.



  • Do you mind?  MPS and Medialint are having a moment here. 



  • FYI, having a form that can't be submitted by pressing enter qualifies as a bug in the shop i work. I won't say it never happens, because it does. But its defined as basic requirement for a form and thus a bug.

    The fact that the user coudn't be bothered to press the button labeled "login" is stupid at best though.

     

     

     


  • Garbage Person

    I have hideous problems with this all the time. My bank's online account login takes our member ID and our password. The form responds to a press of the enter key... But as a SECURITY FEATURE, you must click the Login button rather than pressing enter, or it rejects your login attempt. This means that EVERY time I go there, I need to rekey my login because I instinctively try twice - and god forbid clicking the back button not clear my form entry.



  • @stratos said:

    But its defined as basic requirement for a form and thus a bug.

     

    Sounds fair enough to me.  I often see forms and dialogs where the Enter and Escape keys don't fire the expected buttons and it annoys me.  As do captions that say "Ok" or "Okay" rather than "OK" for some reason.

    I think this is stuff I took on board from reading the MS UI guidelines for VB developers during the VB4 (yes, 4) era.  If they'd publicised that doc a bit more maybe VB would have a slightly better reputation now?  



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

    Sounds fair enough to me.  I often see forms and dialogs where the Enter and Escape keys don't fire the expected buttons and it annoys me.  As do captions that say "Ok" or "Okay" rather than "OK" for some reason.

    I've sometimes caught myself hitting Enter twice when logging into things (when I don't just use an Opera Wand password), because the application I use at work has Enter == Tab anytime except when focus is on a button or multiline textbox, so it goes like: username *tab* password *enter* (first few times this happened, a bit of a "uh... nothing happened, push again?") *enter*.



  •  Sweet. Nothing like a stupid user story to pass the time.



  • @aquanight said:

    username tab password enter (first few times this happened, a bit of a "uh... nothing happened, push again?") enter.
    Navision? I feel your pain.



  • "I'm fairly certain that Joanne's existence is a WTF in and of itself. I really believe she would have a difficult time figuring out a ball point pen if the cap were on it, and thus can't begin to imagine her performing ongoing Life Maintenance Routines, such as regularly placing food into her mouth and not asphyxiating it (sorry, did that sound too hopeful?). "

    Jen, I can empathize since I have a customer exactly like that. Instead of being in management (which you can kind of understand being brain-dead or at least hair-sharpened), mine is supposedly technical support for his company. And yet it's a wonder he doesn't drown brushing his teeth. He has an even worse compatriot who is their point of contact for us - in other words the one in charge of reporting problems to our customer service desk. Conversations with that one sometimes make you think you're speaking different languages:

    Roy: They're complaining that the sky is lighter than it was, any idea why that is?
    Me: Umm... I'm sorry, lighter?
    Roy: Yeah, it was darker before, you know, and now it's lighter and they can see stuff they couldn't before.
    Me: Oh, uh... it's morning. The sun is up.
    Roy: But they said it's light now when it was dark before. Any idea why that is?
    Me: The sun comes up during the day, but at night it's dark.
    Roy: So is that something you can fix, or do I need to call someone else?
    Me: It's daytime. That's the way it is normally.
    Roy: No, they say it was different before. It's definitely not normal because it wasn't like that before.
    Me: (click) .... (click) ... (BANG)



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    FAIL, AIDS
     

    Please, just learn to quote, your posts are making my eyes bleed.



  • It's not me, it's the stupid forum software, I swear. I had to edit that stupid post 3 times to get it halfway readable. Sometimes the forum fails to load properly so I don't get the editting buttons and the quoting refuses to work. No idea why. Half the time it works, half it doesn't. I haven't found any pattern or clues that I can report to Alex yet, to help troubleshoot it.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    It's not me, it's the stupid forum software, I swear. I had to edit that stupid post 3 times to get it halfway readable. Sometimes the forum fails to load properly so I don't get the editting buttons and the quoting refuses to work. No idea why. Half the time it works, half it doesn't. I haven't found any pattern or clues that I can report to Alex yet, to help troubleshoot it.
     

    Just insert the quote tags manually then. This is a PEBKAC problem, which is funny considering your history of "Stupid user" posts.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    I haven't found any pattern or clues that I can report to Alex yet, to help troubleshoot it.

    Alex doesn't care. See: the tag issues.



  • @bstorer said:

    @jetcitywoman said:
    I haven't found any pattern or clues that I can report to Alex yet, to help troubleshoot it.

    Not to mention, we don't need Alex to tell you to get a real browser.



  • Hmm, good point about the browser.  I use Firefox at home, but company mandates IE.  I should still try to slip FF onto this machine when nobodies looking.

    Oh, I just noticed that the forum worked this time.  I have formatting buttons - go figure!  Anyway, I was also going to say that I was trying to manually quote her, but the forum kept eating my quote tags.  I was using angle brackets, though.  Now I see that quote tags should be in square brackets.  Is that normal?  I thought this was based on HTML, and isn't that all angle brackets?

    At least I'm not afraid to admit being the source of a ID10T error.  :-D



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Now I see that quote tags should be in square brackets.  Is that normal?  I thought this was based on HTML, and isn't that all angle brackets?
    This forum uses [url=http://www.bbcode.org/tags.php]BBCode[/url].



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Oh, I just noticed that the forum worked this time.
     

    If you actually stay patient and allow the editor to finish loading, magic things happen (like, it works).

    @jetcitywoman said:

    I was using angle brackets, though.  Now I see that quote tags should be in square brackets.  Is that normal?

    Yes.

    @jetcitywoman said:

    I thought this was based on HTML

    No.

    @jetcitywoman said:

    ID10T error

    Yes. Perhaps now you can have a little compassion for your users? 



  • Oh, thanks.  Now where can I get an angle-to-square bracket converter? 

    JUST Kidding!  Back to your regularly scheduled broadcast... 



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @jetcitywoman said:

    ID10T error

    Yes. Perhaps now you can have a little compassion for your users? 

    I actually have TONS of compassion for my users.  It's only when they beat me down into a sobbing mess that I bring my rants here to you guys.  Kind of dumb, though because then you guys beat me down into a sobbing mess too.  Not that I'm complaining....  :-D



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    It's only when they beat me down into a sobbing mess that I bring my rants here to you guys. 
     

    If you cry because your customer calls, it is time for a career change... WTF.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    you guys beat me ... Not that I'm complaining.... :-D
    Quoted For Hawt!



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    If you cry because your customer calls, it is time for a career change... WTF
     

    Um,  not literally you schmoe.  Just because I'm a gii-rrrllll doesn't mean I weep at every opportunity. 

     



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Um,  not literally you schmoe.  Just because I'm a gii-rrrllll doesn't mean I weep at every opportunity. 
     

    a) You said you sob, not me.

    b) There are no girls on the internet. Although there might be gii-rrrlllls, because that sounds like a sexy version of a grill.



  • @bstorer said:

    @jetcitywoman said:
    you guys beat me ... Not that I'm complaining.... :-D
    Quoted For Hawt!

    Stay the fuck away, these tits are mine!  MINE!

     

    JetCityGRRRL: Send me pix in PM.  Thanks! 



  • Reading this thread really makes me wonder what goes on in your heads, mps and morbius. Maybe there is some sort of humourus undertone that i completely miss, but to me all this just looks like really childish crap, completely lacking in value.



  • Seconded. It's the kind of stuff that might have been funny 10 years ago, and then only because I was a lot less mature at that time.



  • @Obfuscator said:

    Reading this thread really makes me wonder what goes on in your heads, mps and morbius. Maybe there is some sort of humourus undertone that i completely miss, but to me all this just looks like really childish crap, completely lacking in value.

    Welcome to the Internet, Obfuscator!



  • @Obfuscator said:

    what goes on in your heads, mps and morbius.
     

    Humor? Fun?

    Jesus, get a life.



  • @Faxmachinen said:

    Seconded. It's the kind of stuff that might have been funny 10 years ago, and then only because I was a lot less mature at that time.

     

    Right but you have spent an awful lot of time on this forum being a humorless troll so I don't think anyone is surprised.



  • You couldn't fit two quotes into one post?

    Anyway, 'nuff said.



  • @Faxmachinen said:

    Anyway, 'nuff said.

    That comic is so idiotic.  First, it's not women who are scared off, it's the overly-sensitive and self-righteous.  Personally, I'm thankful for that because if you can't take a joke or are horribly offended by everything I don't want you on my Internet.  It's annoying enough to have to deal with religious screwballs and humorless hippies in real life, I'm sure as hell not going to let them ruin one of my only sanctuaries from them.  If JetCityWoman was so horrified by a couple of jokes, then she probably needs to shut down the computer and go join a knitting club or take a cooking class so she can be a good, obedient wife one day.  Also, the chick in that comic is totally not hot.  She's so thin she doesn't even have boobies. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    the chick in that comic is totally hot .... boobies.
    If you look closely, you'll notice that every single one of morb's posts ends with the word boobies.  Eerie, don't you think?



  • [quote user="JenIsAGeek"]Oh, rest assured that Enter does submit the form, or at least it does for me and every other user except "Joanne."[/quote]

    Have you checked that BOTH Enter keys submit the form?

    Also that Joanne knows which key is the enter key?

    @MPS said:

    Please, just learn to quote, your posts are making my eyes bleed.

    Please, just teach how to quote, your trolling is wasting everyone's time.

    And we all know that TRWTF is Community Server.

    Faxmachinen: What is your avatar from? It reminds me of the planform of high Rayleigh number convection.



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

     TRWTF is hitting enter didn't fire the login button...

     

    Only when your input focus is in the password field or not in the username field. When your input focus is in the username field, input focus should be shifted to the password.




  • @Obfuscator said:

    Reading this thread really makes me wonder what goes on in your heads, mps and morbius. Maybe there is some sort of humourus undertone that i completely miss, but to me all this just looks like really childish crap, completely lacking in value.
     

    Obfuscator, nothing you can do or say will change anything with those two: They are trying to get cursed (see: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/t/8159.aspx) and have been certified as swampies (for explanation see: http://www.thestupidestmanonearth.com). Despite of all that, they are pretty clever.

     

    Aside: Sorry, i can not be arsed with BBCODE. C-X C-T C-V for you.

     



  • @m0ffx said:

    @MPS said:

    Please, just learn to quote, your posts are making my eyes bleed.

    Please, just teach how to quote, your trolling is wasting everyone's time.

    If you can't figure it out, you probably shouldn't be posting.  And if asking people to following some fucking guidelines to make things readable is trolling, your pointless flamebaiting over it must make you the Troll Queen.

     

    @m0ffx said:

    And we all know that TRWTF is Community Server.

    Community Server has quite a few idiotic problems but the editor is not one of them.  It works well with every major browser (Opera is not a major browser) and it seems only complete n00bs can't figure out how to post a link or quote.  LURK MOAR.



  • @cklam said:

    Obfuscator, nothing you can do or say will change anything with those two: They are trying to get cursed (see: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/t/8159.aspx) and have been certified as swampies (for explanation see: http://www.thestupidestmanonearth.com).

    Neither MPS nor myself has bothered with SS for quite some time, except to drop into the Mashup thread and try to get idiots like you to stop posting.

     

    @cklam said:

    Despite of all that, they are pretty clever.

    A compliment from you?  I feel so dirty..  the dirt's not coming off!!

     

    @cklam said:

    Aside: Sorry, i can not be arsed with BBCODE. C-X C-T C-V for you.

    So you can find a way to produce mounds of useless posts but typing a couple of square brackets confounds you?



  • I've seen sites where clicking "enter" after typing your username and password seems to do SOMETHING. But not actually log you in. I'll admit that it sometimes takes me a while (waiting for the page to load...) before I remember to try hitting the submit button.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @jetcitywoman said:

    Oh, I just noticed that the forum worked this time.
     

    If you actually stay patient and allow the editor to finish loading, magic things happen (like, it works).

    Surprise: It doesn't. When it doesn't load, it doesn't, giving some weird "JavaScript Error" ('tinyMCE' not defined) which stops anything from loading after that point. May I remind you in which language the editor runs in? ;)

    Anyway, some sites don't work well with "enter-submitting", as all that web2.0 cultism has made them set up "submit" buttons that only respond well to onclick events.



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    Surprise: It doesn't. When it doesn't load, it doesn't, giving some weird "JavaScript Error" ('tinyMCE' not defined) which stops anything from loading after that point. May I remind you in which language the editor runs in? ;)

    Probably because you are trying to click on things before the page is loaded.  I have never had a problem with the forum editor nor TinyMCE if they are fully loaded.

     

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    Anyway, some sites don't work well with "enter-submitting", as all that web2.0 cultism has made them set up "submit" buttons that only respond well to onclick events.

    The enter keypress can still be captured using JS and onclicks won't affect browsers that aren't running JS (although in this day-and-age they all should). 



  • @SuperousOxide said:

    I've seen sites where clicking "enter" after typing your username and password seems to do SOMETHING.
    This site used to take you to the search page. Took me a while to figure out why I couldn't log in, since I rarely use my mouse.



  •  @morbiuswilters said:

    Community Server has quite a few idiotic problems but the editor is not one of them.
    About a year ago now (+/- a few months) the editor was widely complained about. Try posting some code, it usually gets munged. This is on a board ABOUT COMPUTER CODE.

    Oh, and try a bit of backspacing when you're typing sometime. Sooner or later you should encounter a well-known bug. Now tell me that is not an idiotic problem.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    LURK MOAR.

    I've been here over a year longer than you yet posted half as much. As it says beside our posts. True, I was absent for a time. But LURK MOAR yourself.

    (I'm assuming you weren't here before under a different name, but if so, then that's a WTF in itself)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    If you can't figure it out, you probably shouldn't be posting.

    Says the person who is evidently unable to figure out how to quote two people without double-posting.



  • @m0ffx said:

    About a year ago now (+/- a few months) the editor was widely complained about. Try posting some code, it usually gets munged. This is on a board ABOUT COMPUTER CODE.

    If you're posting code, use the raw HTML mode.  WYSIWYG editors are usually horrible for formatting code which is why people don't write their programs in Word.

     

    @m0ffx said:

    I've been here over a year longer than you yet posted half as much. As it says beside our posts. True, I was absent for a time. But LURK MOAR yourself.

    I fail to see how that is relevent.  All you're saying is that you haven't managed to get the hang of this whole posting thing in over a year.  Well, that's great for you, but most of us seem capable of using the editor quite fine without making idiotic mistakes like "not being able to quote" or "not being able to link OMG!"

     

    @m0ffx said:

    Says the person who is evidently unable to figure out how to quote two people without double-posting.

    plz send t3h codez..

     

    Seriously, I know how to quote multiple people (in fact, I probably know a hell of a lot more about the innards of the forum software than you do).  I'm posting multiple replies to different people, though, which means I'm not going to cram them into the same fucking post.  See, not everybody uses the default settings; some people use threaded view or receive email notifications on replies to their posts and entering replies to different parties in a single post makes that unclear.  Of course, you seem like a real dumbass so you'll probably shoot back with something like "NO U!" until the thread is locked.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    JetCityGRRRL: Send me pix in PM.  Thanks! 

    Dude, she's my wife! Back off.

    Slightly more on topic, I used to do in-house software for a medical transcription company. The transcriptionists were used to working with green-screen type software and moving to Windows was a bit of rough transition for them.  On day one of them said she was able log in, but always got an error message during the course of the login. She demonstrated the problem for me and this is what I saw:

       1. She selected the Login... menu, which displayed the login dialog box. The user name field was selected. The Cancel and OK buttons were enabled.
       2. She correctly typed her user name.
       3. She hit enter, which it turns out she expected would move focus down to the password field, but which of course activated the OK button instead.
       4. My software popped up an alert complaining that a password was required. She dismissed the alert and focus was moved to the password field.
       5. She finished logging in without further trouble. (I don't remember whether she hit Enter after typing her password or clicked the OK button.)

    So the problem was arguably user error or a training issue, since in Windows the convention is that Tab, not Enter, moves focus to the next field and Enter selects the default button (OK in this case). However, most of the transcriptionists were making this mistake.

    I solved the problem in the next revision of the software by:

        * Disabling the OK button until at least one character had been typed in both the user name and password fields.
        * Causing the Enter button to move focus between the two text fields until the OK button was enabled.

    Ultimately, they had to learn Windows conventions anyway, since the login dialog wasn't the only software they used.  But at least I was able to remove a tiny frustration from the start of their day.

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