Has anyone else gotten sick and tired of selecting their state and country from a huge drop down? Does anyone not know their state abbreviation? I think I have noticed this even more since moving to North Carolina. Ohio was top of the list for O, but North Carolina is in the middle of N... and their are a lot of states that start with N.
Jayme got it right over on Meiraware Business, just give me a place to type the state abbreviation.
Or even better if you don't need it separate just let me put in my address on one line.
The same goes for country, let me type in USA instead of selecting from a drop down.
-James
I have to disagree with ya on this james.
I'm calling the "garbage in equals garbage out" rule, and if you need accurate data then a dropdown is perfect solution - it also removes any additional validation logic for garbage input, etc.
Don't make me think if you want "usa" or "united states". god knows what wacky validation logic yer gonna pull on me.
Dropdowns are good here.
Small sites can prob get away without them if they don't "need" the info but at that point if you don't need it then don't ask for it.
Why not just right some simple logic to handle the different options? You can write United States, USA, or US. Other options would throw an error. I believe that the user is always right. :)
-James
I'm from New Jersey so I definitely understand what you're complaining about. The worst part is that state abbreviations sort differently alphabetically than full state names. It's probably the proper thing to always sort by full state name but it varies between sites so you can't even memorize the number of times to hit 'N'. And then it's worse with country because you never know if it's going to be USA or United States and if it's going to be at the top of the list or sorted with the other countries.
I think the main problem with your solution is that it makes it hard for a site to make sure that it got state sales tax right. I guarantee that users will figure out many more bizarre ways of formatting addresses than your parsing & validation code will ever be able to handle so you're stuck trying to explain why you don't like their address.
What I really hate are mapping sites that have one single line box or make you separate it. 99% of addresses are formatted on the web, in email, etc. like they're written on envelopes -- one big multiline blob. Yet I have to copy & paste each independent element because mapping sites can't accept the blob.
Speaking of usability, this Preview Your Comment feature sucks!
better yet, why not just have zip code, you should be able to look up city/state on the backend from just zip code..or even better, try to get their zip code from their ip address and say "is this yours? if so, leave it, otherwise correct it"
And please - remember - there's life *OUTSIDE* the US, too! Please don't force me to pick a state - I live in a country that doesn't care about "states" - just let me fill in my country, ok, thanks! :-)
Marc
Of course, you wouldn't be griping about the position of your state in a dropdown list if you were using Firefox instead of IE -- as long as your prefix typing is within a reasonable time frame, you can type the first several letters of the desired option (N-O gets you there).
Or if you're stuck with IE brain-dead-ness, you could always hit O and up-arrow twice.
@Steve: Agreed! Even better!
@Dave: I am no saying you have to store it that way, you could have a textbox that takes two letters then do a lookup in your state table and get your tax. If it doesn't show up you can tell them it's an invalid state.
@Richie: I do use Firefox, and I also found the other trick. But why should I have to do that? Typing NC is so much easier.
James, I'm a little surprised about this one. Why not do the AJAX thing and wire the textbox into a lookup? That way, you can type in Nor, and it will come up with North Carolina.
Jason,
I just don't think the dropdown is necessary. Our users shouldn't have to worry about or care that we are doing a lookup in the background.
@Jason has the right idea. We get a lot of evaluational form downloads which we have to tie sales people's region, I can only guess the nightmare if it was a free flow. I have a feeling Meiraware made his abstract enough to deal with Purchase Order and how things on invoices have to match.
Tim,
I guess I wasn't clear enough in the post, but I would still do the correct validation and even store it as a lookup in the database. I am just saying from a UI perspective it is much easier to type in two letters than deal with the drop down.
Hey James, in one aspect i agree with you - in another i don't..
data is only useful if it's accurate..
with that in mind, i do admit that not all developers has brains enough to figure out that if you have a "country" dropdown list that's mandatory, then you definitely need a "state/region" list that's flexible (add "other"???) and don't do the typical stupid thing and validate the zip code/postcode after the US only.
Oh, and get the order right - country should come before "state/region" if there's a dependancy.
I don't know how many forms i've filled out that hasn't had a "other" option in the "state/region" list and i've had to enter "New York" or something while selecting "Australia" in the country dropdown.
Regardless, a better solution these days is simply to use AJAX to populate the box by filtering. So you start to write "West..." and it'll filter to "West Guinea, West Zimbabwe, West Australia" as you type...that's what AJAX is for :)
Well, since the other Steve beat me to the punch, I'll just give him a +1 for lookup the State and Country based on the zip code.
And he gets bonus points for using geo-location to guestimate the user's zip off the bat!
Yeah, I'm all for improving usability. But you can't sacrifice the quality of your data.
Billions and billions of $ go into 'cleaning' poorly collected address data every year.
Personally, I'd recommend the best of both worlds where possible: just collect a zip code (for US residents) and be done.
I completely agree with you. Why not take it a step further? Why not just one big text box?
I liked Jeff's example at www.codinghorror.com/.../000532.html.< />
I mean come on, how hard is it to parse this stuff out (especially if there is good contextual guidance)? Sure there are issues, but I bet we could get it right 90% of the time (if the postal service can do it, why couldn't we?). If we can't parse it, then we could return a more structured view (or something less natural).
@Steve beat me to it...in fact, I usually do a lookup off of just a zip; there are plenty of free services that can be tapped into to do this.
James:
That's why I created that DropDown TypeAhead control as a demo when I spoke to the Cinci .NET User Group. Weren't you there?
Check it out on codeplex:
http://www.codeplex.com/ProjectRapiers
Brian,
I have used controls like that before but I still prefer just a two character box. Typeahead is usually a little slow and not every site does it.
-James
Just a thought - while you may know your state abbreviation, not everyone may know it or may even get it wrong (hopefully the zip check will catch it though). After all 16 of the 50 states begin with M and N (not including "possessions" MH or MP) and I have trouble remembering the abbreviations for them all (quick tell me: ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, and MT). In past applications, I have put the abbreviation first and then the name: NE - Nebraska, NV - Nevada, etc. When used in combination with a type-ahead combo, it works nicely.
/rjvs