Comments on: But It’s My Name Dagblastit!: Intelligent Form Validation

By: Ringback Tones

Ringback Tones — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:00:26 +0000

Hit this right on the nose. Just a really easy way to lose new users or customers. You’ve got me reviewing all of my clients form validation scripts to make sure I’m not guilty of this myself.

By: jjjj james

jjjj james — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:59:17 +0000

j.j. ISNT your ‘god given’ name – in the loose sense (I DO know what you real name is) and in a strict sense – we probably don’t know what your ‘god-given’ name IS. but in a legal sense – the name on your birth certificate ISN’T j.j. either…
as the periods you use are clearly showing an abbreviation. …

that being said – i agree with form validation non-sense.

have a good day

By: Dagblastit

Dagblastit — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:40:15 +0000

hi J.J. This post cracks me up. I hope you don’t mind that I really like the sound of the name “Dagblastit” and decided to call myself that. But on a (slightly) more serious note, it isn’t only the minimum number of characters on a form entry that one should think about, it’s also the MAXIMUM number. What am I talking about? At our trade show display estore we do allow one character order form entries (i.e. first name could be “A”), but there is also a max number of characters for each entry. For “email address”, it used to be something like 40 (just guessing). Anyway, longfirstname.longlastname@subdomain.longgovernmentagency.gov placed an order and their email address got chopped. They didn’t get their order confirmation and we had to phone them to find out what their email address was. We have since increased the number of characters saved). So intelligent form validation/design requires thinking about both the minimum and the maximum. ~ Steve (aka Mr. Al Dagblastit, aka Pinnacle Trade Show Booths)

By: Jeff Gladnick

Jeff Gladnick — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:02:20 +0000

Two letters only? What about people named “Al”. And how is Bo Jackson supposed to signup?!!!?

By: J.J. Merrick

J.J. Merrick — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:25:23 +0000

BTW editing the post to link to the form… maybe they will see the post and change it!

By: J.J. Merrick

J.J. Merrick — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:24:57 +0000

@Ben yeah I never even thought about that sect of people. They tend to have 2 letter first names ALOT.

@alan haha yeah… JP! :-)

@brett Do you actually do any work? haha

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:29:38 +0000

That is just craptacular. I know a certain poker player that could stand to see the comment about really thinking things through to the detail… Any guesses?

By: Brett Davis

Brett Davis — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:10:36 +0000

Wow, I never knew developers actually went the extra mile to validate peoples names in form fields beyond making sure that they entered sometime. LOL I guess my old stand by sign up or firstname: a lastname: b is not gonna work on this site.

By: Ben Nadel

Ben Nadel — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:39:49 +0000

I can’t believe names have to be greater than 2 letters. I have had two very close asian friends that violate this:

Ye
Yu

I have to imagine there are many more… too bad they can never be considered human :(

By: J.J. Merrick

J.J. Merrick — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:51:37 +0000

hahaha Good point Todd. I actually used jay because 9 years ago when I first got the cyber-jay.com domain name I had to use jay because they only allowed 3 or more characters. I have since moved to jj@themerrickhouse for the most part :-D