Interface Hall of Shame



  • I believe most of us saw some of these, but as friend just sent me this link I just can't wait to post it here as well:

    http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/errormsg.htm

     

    these too: <font color="#0000ff" size="2">

    http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/stupid.htm

    </font>

    http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/stupid.htm



  • "I just can't wait to post it here as well"

    Since the page has been there, unchanged, since the end of the last millennium, I really don't think you need to rush so much.

    (Which is not to say it isn't worth seeing, just that you might be better to announce the site as a 'golden oldie'.)



  • Is your faux link a cleverly ironic statement about unintuitive interfaces?

    Incidentally, thedailywtf's html is worthy of its own story.



  • ThedailyWTF's sign-up form is worthy of being in some kind of hall of shame. I e-mailed the site owners about it, but I have not heard from them in approximately 2 weeks.

    The problem is that it asks for the user to enter his e-mail address twice, except that the e-mail address field isn't obfuscated, so there is no need to enter it a second time. Password fields demand the user confirm a second time because their contents are invisible. There is no need, ever, to confirm a visible field in a form. Some idiot web developer, somewhere, sometime, thought it was a great way to avoid people entering fake e-mail addresses, except that people enter those incorrectly on purpose, being sick of having their privacy abused.

    The practice has caught on and nobody questions its lunacy!

     



  • [quote user="kwyjibo"]

    The problem is that it asks for the user to
    enter his e-mail address twice, except that the e-mail address field
    isn't obfuscated, so there is no need to enter it a second time.
    Password fields demand the user confirm a second

    time because
    their contents are invisible. There is no need, ever, to confirm a
    visible field in a form. Some idiot web developer, somewhere, sometime,
    thought it was a great way to avoid people entering fake e-mail
    addresses, except that people enter those incorrectly on purpose, being
    sick of having their privacy abused.

    The practice has caught on and nobody questions its lunacy!
    [/quote]

    It
    has nothing to do with avoiding fake addresses, but with avoiding
    mistyped addresses.  Having all the characters completely visible
    doesn't help all that much in spotting a large number of common
    typographical errors.  The theory is, by typing it twice, mistyped
    addresses (i.e. bounced e-mail) can be reduced by an appreciable
    amount.  

    It's probably true, though most people who
    understand the concept simply use copy and paste to duplicate the
    entry, and I'm no different in that respect.





     



  • Some of the material on this site misses the point entirely. I. e. when they discuss file dialogs, they say that Windows is arrogant in appending a default extension to that chosen by the user if it's not registered. I wonder why they didn't realize it was because of the "Save as Type" box being set to "Text Documents" and not "All Files". I admit that this behavior is a little confusing and i. e. GIMP's file dialogs are better, but most users don't want to end up with an "unusable" (as in "I can't open it with a double click") file by typing in a filename with a dot in it.



  • There is no argument that can ever justify it; if a field is not obfuscated, it should never require confirmation. If you want to confirm one visible field, why stop there? Let's confirm everything, or we'll have common typos galore.

    FAVOURITE FOOD MISMATCH. PLEASE RE-ENTER FAVOURITE FOOD.

     



  • [quote user="kwyjibo"]

    There is no argument that can ever justify it; if a field is not obfuscated, it should never require confirmation. If you want to confirm one visible field, why stop there? Let's confirm everything, or we'll have common typos galore.

    FAVOURITE FOOD MISMATCH. PLEASE RE-ENTER FAVOURITE FOOD.

     

    [/quote]

    It's easy to mis-type.

     Puting your favourite food as "Samlon" instead of "Salmon" isn't likely to cause any harm. Typing your address as "rt51we542@hotmail.com" instead of "rt51we524@hotmail.com" will mean they cannot contact you at all. Repetiton in that case is a useful quick check because of the severity of the potential failure.
     

    Unlike postal addresses which can have several mistakes in and still end up at the right destination, email addresses are not so amenable to errors. 



  • [quote user="RayS"]

    Puting your favourite food as "Samlon" instead of "Salmon" isn't likely to cause any harm.[/quote]

    Well, at least until the point when the live samlon they shipped you start maturing into grendels.....



  • [quote user="RayS"][quote user="kwyjibo"]

    There is no argument that can ever justify it; if a field is not obfuscated, it should never require confirmation. If you want to confirm one visible field, why stop there? Let's confirm everything, or we'll have common typos galore.

    FAVOURITE FOOD MISMATCH. PLEASE RE-ENTER FAVOURITE FOOD.

     

    [/quote]

    It's easy to mis-type.

     Puting your favourite food as "Samlon" instead of "Salmon" isn't likely to cause any harm. Typing your address as "rt51we542@hotmail.com" instead of "rt51we524@hotmail.com" will mean they cannot contact you at all. Repetiton in that case is a useful quick check because of the severity of the potential failure.
     

    Unlike postal addresses which can have several mistakes in and still end up at the right destination, email addresses are not so amenable to errors. 

    [/quote]

    In fact, I even had to check three times before I spotted the difference between those hotmail addresses.

    So yes, it is defendable, because an email field is not the same as a Favourite Food field. Though I've never seen a signup form that asked twice for my preferred username.


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