no dashes or spaces hall of shame

[leo]

What is the 'no dashes or spaces hall of shame'?
It's a list of company that has no budget for programmers that can simply replace dashes or spaces from a webform input string...
From the DRV it's not that amzing, but even Visa makes customer-unfriendly forms!
Have a look at the list (http://www.unixwiz.net/ndos-shame.html)!

[Hazmat]

What is the 'no dashes or spaces hall of shame'?
It's a list of company that has no budget for programmers that can simply replace dashes or spaces from a webform input string...
From the DRV it's not that amzing, but even Visa makes customer-unfriendly forms!
Have a look at the list (http://www.unixwiz.net/ndos-shame.html)!
I think maybe because some computer programs are designed to read letters and/or numbers excluding the extras like question marks, commas, dashes etc. :D

Maybe thats it. :D

[gkmac]

I think maybe because some computer programs are designed to read letters and/or numbers excluding the extras like question marks, commas, dashes etc.That's probably true in the systems that actually handle the credit card numbers e.g. those machines in retailers have a numeric keypad (without a dash or space or punctuation) which is used to punch in the credit card number should a card fail to swipe or if a "customer not present" transaction is done over the phone.

For "self service" credit card transactions where the customer has to punch in their credit card number themselves... it's no problem if you have to do it on a telephone keypad, since there's just numbers on that just like the retailers' machines.

But in the case of webforms, those number-only systems are in a way connected to a keyboard which can type a heck of a lot more than just numbers. In that instance, it's up to the webform itself to ensure that non-numbers don't get through to the credit card processing system, whatever that may be.

It sounds like a defence for those "no dash or space forms", but there's also the "advantage" in that those average users who are worried about typing the wrong number can check on the screen if they've got the number right before pressing "Buy". For those who need to check, typing the spaces or dashes between each block of four numbers will make it a lot easier to do so.

Plus, not everyone will realise that behind the scenes only numbers are expected. They'll see the spaces between the numbers on their own credit card and, having a space bar on their own keyboard, will assume that spaces form part of the number.

As leo's link to the hall of shame web page shows, just one line of code is all it takes to make these webforms work properly.

[JJuggle]

We must all vet our candidates for their position on this issue. If there is one single issue in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, support for legislation requiring the recognition of spaces and dashes for online credit card purchases will be my benchmark for choosing a candidate.

Bumper stickers reading: $ccnum =~ s/[-\s]//g; should be on every car in America!!!!!

[johnfoss]

I don't have a problem with it for entering credit card numbers. I find it much easier to just punch the numbers, though this makes it harder to "proof" your work before you submit. If the intent is to educate users that they don't have to include the spaces or hyphens, that's fine. If the form can't read the numbers if spaces or dashes were used, yes, it's nothing but sloppy programming.

What about hyphens in names? Lots of people have hyphenated names. Like married people. Like my wife. But no, many business databases can't handle a hyphen (or space) in a name. So, when we have a hard time looking her up, it comes down to a hit-and-miss method of searching:
Dillard-Foss
Dillard Foss
DillardFoss
Dillard
Foss

What a pain.

The other day, I spent about ten minutes trying to submit an online form that, I finally figured out, didn't allow the use of hyphens. I can't remember the details, but the problem was, one of the terms a user was most likely to type in there was the company's own, hyphenated product or offer name. No wonder it took me, someone who's familiar with such things, so long to figure it out. It finally got sent, with some carefully worded suggestions for their webmaster...