[HN Gopher] User Inyerface - A worst-practice UI experiment
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       User Inyerface - A worst-practice UI experiment
        
       Author : andyjih_
       Score  : 889 points
       Date   : 2021-06-25 19:37 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (userinyerface.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (userinyerface.com)
        
       | hpen wrote:
       | I got the fuck out after i clicked "no"
        
       | drosan wrote:
       | I gave up on "password" field - can't figure out how to make it
       | "unsafe" for the life of me OTL
        
       | trymas wrote:
       | Thanks, I hate it (or love all the dark patterns in one place :)
       | ). On mobile I have tried to go through the first form and rage
       | quit after 3 minutes. How do you close that hurry up modal? You
       | could only expand or lock it, but did not see how to close it.
        
         | jffry wrote:
         | Bottom left, click on: (c)lose
        
         | genewitch wrote:
         | (c)
        
       | vecinu wrote:
       | I rage-quit when I couldn't scroll the T&C fast enough. I guess
       | my patience has gotten a lot worse as I have gotten older.
        
       | SavantIdiot wrote:
       | I remember when <blink></blink> was the most annoying thing about
       | HTML. Ooof.
        
       | minusSeven wrote:
       | bla I couldn't find any acceptable password......
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | sgt wrote:
       | That country dropdown selector had me cracking up. And all the
       | flags are not only unordered, but in black and white!
        
         | cobbaut wrote:
         | In fact they are ordered by alphabet.
        
       | nojs wrote:
       | "Select all checks" was my favourite. Half the time when I'm
       | shown crosswalks I know they aren't crosswalks but also know that
       | I'm expected to click them, maybe, sometimes. So infuriating.
        
       | CamperBob2 wrote:
       | That's some Douglas Adams[1] grade work, there. Bravo.
       | 
       | 1: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Bureaucracy_1987
        
       | z3t4 wrote:
       | Didnt hijack the back button
        
       | throwamon wrote:
       | I haven't laughed this much in a while, well done! (Or... the
       | opposite of that?)
       | 
       | I was just a little disappointed when I clicked the back button
       | and it actually worked instead of the game hijacking it and
       | filling my tab history with garbage.
        
       | jrochkind1 wrote:
       | i could not figure out the captcha, did not complete.
        
       | kbouck wrote:
       | Reminded me of The Moron Test.
        
       | steveskinner wrote:
       | 10.22 that was frustrating...
        
       | narush wrote:
       | This was actually hilarious, and honestly better than half the
       | screens I've designed :-)
        
       | eyelidlessness wrote:
       | Nice touch pre-scrolling the terms, and making it scroll up
       | quickly but down slowly
        
       | suyash wrote:
       | LOL what a nice joke on UI!
        
       | jodrellblank wrote:
       | See the Bad UI Battles Reddit about these kinds of patterns
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/
        
       | VSerge wrote:
       | I found the country selection by black and white flag to be
       | deliciously horrible. And the bow captcha was just hilarious.
       | Kudos to the creators for the level of absurdity of this form.
        
       | soperj wrote:
       | I laughed at various points. well done.
        
       | xophishox wrote:
       | I cant stop laughing trying to fill out forms.
        
       | wtetzner wrote:
       | How do I get past this?
       | 
       | > Your password is not unsafe
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | There's nothing to get past. Your password is not unsafe, which
         | is what you want, you're good. Just click next.
        
         | WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
         | need to be Password1234
        
         | grawprog wrote:
         | You may need to add a cyrillic character...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | kristopolous wrote:
         | use A1AAAAAAAAAA and be A1AAAAAAAAAA@gmail.com
        
         | zild3d wrote:
         | that means its fine (not unsafe is safe)
        
         | float4 wrote:
         | I wasn't getting through because my domain was "domain". When I
         | changed it to "gmail" it was fine.
        
       | iab wrote:
       | I can't remember the last time I was this angry
        
       | dang wrote:
       | One past thread:
       | 
       |  _User Inyerface - A worst-practice UI experiment_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344565 - July 2019 (255
       | comments)
        
         | Jipazgqmnm wrote:
         | And here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20353724 on July
         | 4, 2019
         | 
         | and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20345826 on July
         | 3, 2019
         | 
         | and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20351023 on July
         | 4, 2019
        
           | dang wrote:
           | True! it's just that the convention is not to link to past
           | submissions that didn't get interesting threads. Otherwise
           | users get cranky when they click on the links and find
           | nothing interesting there.
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | Oh my nerves... what a stresstest.
        
       | siraben wrote:
       | 00:02:53 I don't think it was bad, there are were some
       | frustrating moments such as having to put one's age as well as
       | birth date, uploading an image, and reading the password
       | requirements.
        
       | grawprog wrote:
       | Well...I did it...somehow...I did...
       | 
       | 00:06:57
       | 
       | That seems too fast...apparently i've experienced these things
       | far too much. It actually was filling me with rage. I came close
       | to saying fuck it...I really did...
       | 
       | Well done to the creators...you managed to, with 100% accuracy,
       | capture every single thing that's horrible about signing up to
       | websites.
       | 
       | That bow thing though...gotta admit, was worth it just for the
       | chuckle I got as I realized...
        
         | LeftHandPath wrote:
         | I got it in 5:58 and I'm proud.
        
         | pageandrew wrote:
         | I got it in 3:49!
        
         | danudey wrote:
         | I got 6 minutes and 7 seconds, half of which I think I spent
         | trying to figure out the capcha.
         | 
         | Also, if you got to the capcha and got it on the first try, go
         | back and fail it a few times. They have some really clever
         | ones.
        
           | sciurus wrote:
           | I bailed on the captcha after 3 tries. It was infuriating,
           | which is my experience with real captchas more often than I'd
           | like to admit.
        
             | neycoda wrote:
             | My favorite CAPTCHAs are when they don't state whether
             | they're case-sensitive or not and it's hard to tell whether
             | some characters are uppercase or lowercase.
        
             | 6510 wrote:
             | I sometimes save the good ones to disk just to laugh a bit
             | more later.
        
         | romwell wrote:
         | I got nearly the same time, 06:58. Spent the most time on the
         | bow.
         | 
         | If you liked this, you will enjoy the Phone Number UI from
         | hell[1]. Surprisingly, I did see stuff like that in the wild -
         | and from Google, of all places![2]
         | 
         | [1]https://qz.com/679782/
         | 
         | [2]https://i.redd.it/gns5ci5hp2yz.png
        
         | dathinab wrote:
         | Wait you can advance beyond page 1?
        
           | smeej wrote:
           | Same question. My password wasn't unsafe. Abcdefghij1 seemed
           | unsafe to me.
        
             | Zababa wrote:
             | You have to scroll down to see the other condition to make
             | your password safe.
        
         | fernandotakai wrote:
         | i did in 4:33 -- it was fun!
         | 
         | https://i.imgur.com/RiHmKZM.png
        
           | squiggleblaz wrote:
           | You and I have very different definitions of fun! I got
           | annoyed when it asked me for a profile picture and I just
           | closed it.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | CubicsRube wrote:
             | Same! Closed it on profile picture. Then saw people
             | mentioning "bow" in the comments, so I had to find out what
             | it is. Worst possible way start a day.
        
               | slowwriter wrote:
               | I saw the bow thing in the comments too, but I can't
               | understand what it is even though I completed the form!
        
               | grawprog wrote:
               | It was one of the captcha forms at the end. It used a
               | clever play on words.
        
         | dr_orpheus wrote:
         | I nearly quit when it said "your age and birthdate don't
         | match". Glad I got through because the bow and check also gave
         | me a laugh.
        
           | romwell wrote:
           | I absolutely expected that. Having both birthdate and age was
           | the Chekhov's gun on that form.
           | 
           | The only thing better would be to have them on different form
           | pages.
        
             | nomadluap wrote:
             | And the form clears every time you go back/forward
        
             | ehsankia wrote:
             | I expected that one, but somehow got the gender wrong. I
             | hate those radio selects!
        
         | kzshantonu wrote:
         | Is that time including reading the terms or without?
        
         | cyckl wrote:
         | 00:33:39--Jury is out on whether that's a good or bad thing...
        
           | grawprog wrote:
           | That deserves a medal just for the incredible amount of
           | inhuman patience that must have taken.
           | 
           | That's just an insane level of perseverance.
        
         | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
         | > Well done to the creators...you managed to, with 100%
         | accuracy, capture every single thing that's horrible about
         | signing up to websites.
         | 
         | Oh no no no. For an authentic experience it needs to reload the
         | page and wipe out all forms when you click 'next' and one of
         | the fields is not valid. (And of course reloading the page
         | should take at least five seconds.)
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | (2018)
       | 
       |  _2 years ago Discussion_ :
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344565
        
       | slowmovintarget wrote:
       | I laughed out loud at the expansion control in place of the
       | "close" X in the corner of the T&C modal.
        
         | sodafountan wrote:
         | "Send to Bottom" of the help box is hilarious
        
           | Pxtl wrote:
           | It took me way longer than I wanted to admit to figure out
           | how to get rid of that, and then it starts slowly....
           | crawling.... downwards....
        
       | superdisk wrote:
       | My favorite part was the giant array of checked checkboxes and
       | the instructions to only check three. I started mindlessly
       | unchecking all of them and then accidentally hit the randomly
       | placed "select all" checkbox once I got near the end.
       | Legitimately made me laugh out loud at how absurd it was.
        
       | mpva wrote:
       | Drat! it took em: 00:09:23. That bloody accept terms and those
       | checkmarks at the end got me good. Nice game and great way to get
       | people to want to apply. Kudos to the creators.
        
       | enjoyyourlife wrote:
       | Reminds me of job applications
        
         | loa_in_ wrote:
         | Not enough repetitive questions. The birth date one was
         | appropriately frustrating though!
        
       | infogulch wrote:
       | Love all the little details. Some favorites:
       | 
       | * Clicking 'expand' button on any dialog (T&C) expanded the
       | dialog to cover the page but doesn't expand the contents to match
       | 
       | * Tiny flag icons to select country
       | 
       | * The age slider that went from 0-180 years and didn't update as
       | you slid it (fun on a trackpad)
       | 
       | * number input for house number that required clicking on the
       | arrows to change it one at a time
       | 
       | * utterly ambiguous human verification instructions
        
         | plebianRube wrote:
         | I was dying with laughter. Love the helpful chat box which
         | takes forever to drop, the helpful popup telling you to hurry
         | up with an option to lock it where you'd expect an ok, and the
         | expand button where you would expect the close button.
         | 
         | But captchas were truly the icing on the cake.
         | 
         | The only thing missing would have been a 'subscribe to our
         | newsletter' feature 2 seconds after each page loads.
        
           | gota wrote:
           | I almost died laughing, too
           | 
           | When I slid the marker to about half the maximum length and
           | the slider showed me 95 years old I cracked
        
             | neycoda wrote:
             | It's future-proofing for the next 1000 years.
        
         | cube00 wrote:
         | The way the final verification overlay window was just a little
         | too small so you had to scroll one line to get the final set of
         | check boxes was a very nice touch.
        
         | romwell wrote:
         | >number input for house number that required clicking on the
         | arrows to change it one at a time
         | 
         | You might enjoy the Phone Number UI from Hell[1], and Google's
         | implementation of it[2]
         | 
         | [1]https://qz.com/679782/
         | 
         | [2]https://i.redd.it/gns5ci5hp2yz.png
        
         | wongarsu wrote:
         | Flag icons in grayscale. My country's flag is three equally
         | large horizontal bars, just like 12 other nations (and a lot
         | more if you count variations like little insignia etc). [1]
         | 
         | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triband_(flag)
        
           | mjhagen wrote:
           | I'm one of those 12 too, I just went to dev tools and
           | searched for my country's 2 char code.
        
             | Gaelan wrote:
             | They're in alphabetical order, which helps a bit.
        
               | mdaniel wrote:
               | Given the objective of this page, that's a bug :-)
               | 
               | They should be sorted by the date of their founding, or
               | by total miles of railway or something
        
         | kvirani wrote:
         | My current real world frustration: a date picker for birthdate
         | which starts in current year and I believe the native selector
         | in Android/Chrome doesn't let you select a year. You hit left
         | arrow to go down month by month. Am I crazy and did I miss
         | this? Ive seen it a few times now!
        
           | httpsterio wrote:
           | Usually you can hit the year number and it'll let you skip
           | whole years. But yeah.
        
             | Pxtl wrote:
             | iirc the Android 4 date picker had a microscopic hit-area
             | on the date where, if clicked, would display a year-key-in
             | dialog. I don't know if newer ones have this.
             | 
             | I hate date pickers so much that I use the Google Assistant
             | in all its hellish, buggy glory to create appointments for
             | my calendar on my phone.
        
               | mleonhard wrote:
               | Google's UX is slightly broken and nobody in the
               | organization cares to fix it. Their date & time pickers
               | are good examples of this.
               | 
               | Flutter provides separate Material date picker [0] and
               | time picker widgets [1], but no date-time picker widget
               | that displays the selected DateTime and lets the user
               | change the date or time. When I asked Flutter team for
               | one 2 years ago, their UX person refused to add it,
               | saying that because it's not in the Material Design Spec
               | [2] [3] that it doesn't belong in the Flutter widget
               | library.
               | 
               | Flutter does implement the excellent iOS DateTime picker
               | [3].
               | 
               | [0] https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/material/showDatePick
               | er.html
               | 
               | [1] https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/material/showTimePick
               | er.html
               | 
               | [2] https://material.io/components/date-pickers
               | 
               | [3] https://material.io/components/time-pickers
               | 
               | [4]
               | https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/widgets/cupertino
        
               | wruza wrote:
               | I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I can type
               | this entire paragraph faster than picking a date with any
               | goddamn date picker. A little faster I can type:
               | - 27 jun 16:30       - sunday 16:30       - tomorrow
               | 16:30
               | 
               | Before I switched to using siri, I often typed that into
               | notes or telegram saved messages and then tapped on it to
               | create an event. The amount of bullshit ui developers
               | like to introduce is unbearable.
               | 
               | And now for some mind-blowing ui:                 - team
               | building fri 7pm weekly remind 1h, 30min add coworkers
        
               | 6510 wrote:
               | Everything works with week numbers in my job. It makes
               | sense because everyone is on a 4 week schedule.
        
           | 411111111111111 wrote:
           | There usually is a way, but it's often non obvious. I.e. the
           | picker might have a header like July without any visual
           | offset, but clicking could still switch the view to the year
           | picker.
           | 
           | I usually just try various stuff and I can't remember a
           | single time where I didn't find an option _eventually_ , but
           | they're sometimes well hidden
        
           | TranquilMarmot wrote:
           | I wonder if there's a way to get the datepicker to open on a
           | specific date... find the median age of all users and open
           | the datepicker in that year haha
        
             | reaperducer wrote:
             | It's actually quite easy. I did just such a thing earlier
             | this week.
        
         | karrotwaltz wrote:
         | Also if you select the first choice for birth date you get
         | April 1st
        
         | actinium226 wrote:
         | My solution for the age slider was to just accept whatever age
         | it gave me and then select birth year to match
        
       | kgantchev wrote:
       | Took 8 mins to complete...
        
       | fredley wrote:
       | This could be so much worse. Why does the form retain my
       | information when I get something wrong? It should reset, or go
       | back to the start.
        
       | fullwaza wrote:
       | New Windows 11 UI preview?
        
       | toxik wrote:
       | 5:59 on an iPhone, why did I do this I don't know
        
       | throwaway4pooxi wrote:
       | love the help chat bottom right only has a increase height
       | button.
        
       | bawolff wrote:
       | "Your password can have at least 1 cyrillic character"
       | 
       | Rofl
        
       | aetherspawn wrote:
       | I started laughing hysterically when I pressed "send to bottom"
       | on the agent chatbox and it animated to minimise over ~30
       | seconds.
        
       | ParanoidShroom wrote:
       | Lovely to see a small company I worked with seeing end up here!!
       | If someone is looking for an agency, super fun and great people
       | over there!!!!
        
       | ElectricMind wrote:
       | I hate you. Scrolling down terms and conditions felt like
       | colonoscopy in slow motion . motherferken :D
        
       | simlan wrote:
       | That was hilarious i gave up at the slow scrolling cookie consent
       | template. Thanks for the laugh !!!
        
       | beprogrammed wrote:
       | Thanks for the ideas, I will be sure to implement them in my next
       | project.
        
         | dt3ft wrote:
         | We should make this a thing. Enough with catering to user's
         | wishes and making everything idiot-proof :)
        
       | moistly wrote:
       | Doesn't appear to work on my tablet... so goal 110% achieved!
       | 
       | Edit: oh, heck, it does work--I completely missed the obvious
       | misdirection!
        
         | genewitch wrote:
         | i had to view source - for a second i thought this was a
         | notpron-ish sort of game. Then i had to look again. There's no
         | indication that you're hovering over something.
        
       | easterncalculus wrote:
       | I was expecting the benny hill theme to eventually start playing,
       | this is hilarious.
        
       | neycoda wrote:
       | The Help box grew over the page so I couldn't get past that.
        
       | luke2m wrote:
       | 00:03:53
       | 
       | Much easier on mobile than desktop
        
       | pelagicAustral wrote:
       | I rage-quitted on the third captcha
        
         | jumelles wrote:
         | I ended up getting through by selecting them all.
        
           | jrochkind1 wrote:
           | I selected them all -- on every one it looked to me like they
           | all were the thing -- I did not pass. At least not if getting
           | another captcha means you didn't pass.
        
           | Asraelite wrote:
           | I gave up after the 6th captcha or so. If the answer is to
           | check them all then that's a bit dishonest, because some
           | pictures technically don't apply. For example, glass windows
           | are not "glasses".
        
             | genewitch wrote:
             | "glasses" also means things that are glass. Like Pyrex and
             | phone screens are both examples of glasses.
        
               | Asraelite wrote:
               | That's true, hadn't thought of that.
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | The worst was the initial scroll offset. I was wondering why
           | the last row had no checkboxes below the images, and was
           | unable select those images. After three or four times
           | submitting that damn dialog I noticed that I can scroll up.
           | 
           | I also had to scroll down the terms and conditions dialog
           | _twice_ because I thought I could just click the text in
           | order to toggle the checkbox.
           | 
           | 8 minutes and something. Very painful.
        
       | vlunkr wrote:
       | My favorite thing is the painfully slow animation when you send
       | the chat box to the bottom.
        
       | Pxtl wrote:
       | 03:51
       | 
       | I laughed out loud when I got to the bottom of the last page and
       | didn't see checkboxes and realized the checkboxes were _above_
       | the pictures and not below and had to scroll to the top.
        
         | paulddraper wrote:
         | I noticed that after a few seconds, but I had to go though like
         | 8 screens and it took 3+ minutes....
         | 
         | Did I just keep getting the Captcha choices wrong?
        
           | whelming_wave wrote:
           | For all the captchas on this site you have to check every
           | box, IIRC.
        
       | beforeolives wrote:
       | I genuinely gave up after two unsuccessful clicks. It probably
       | says something about my personality or current state of mind.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | It's so bad I didn't want to go past the 2nd page.
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | A complement actually
        
       | arthurcolle wrote:
       | God this is painful
        
       | gonzo41 wrote:
       | I really like the box in the bottom right corner. That made me
       | laugh out loud when it kept growing.
        
       | easton_s wrote:
       | I hated it. Good Job!
        
       | 1472852 wrote:
       | Yeye
        
       | uudecoded wrote:
       | This is interesting and potentially has value. To the end of
       | deriving public value, is there source code or (non-)business
       | logic that can provide an explanation to the choices made in
       | developing this form?
       | 
       | Alternatively, and pessimistically, is this simply a successful
       | marketing endeavour by a digital agency?
        
       | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
       | 8:52 on iPhone because I was laughing at checks with the chess
       | photos.
       | 
       | It's hard to find good satire anymore, appreciate their work.
        
       | Aeolun wrote:
       | It... doesn't feel all that bad. Maybe more par for the course?
       | 
       | Sure, some button styling is a bit messed up, but...
        
         | Rumudiez wrote:
         | You must be a UX researcher
        
       | estranhosidade wrote:
       | Truly frustrating, well done!
        
       | arendtio wrote:
       | Actually, I have spend more time on some 'real' sign up pages...
       | 
       | At least this time, I was constantly laughing about the somewhat
       | absurd combinations. But I am missing some of the harder parts,
       | like forms not showing because they are only loaded when you
       | disable your ad-blocker or forms working in specific browser
       | versions only. However, that would probably make it too
       | hard/realistic.
       | 
       | I love it!
       | 
       | PS: Just to give an example: The login form for the German
       | Vorwerk website does not show in Firefox
       | https://www.vorwerk.com/de/de/s/shop/login and when you opt to
       | register, the button just disappears, but nothing else happens...
       | And yes, you need that form to actually buy products.
        
         | tethys wrote:
         | That Vorwerk form works fine for me in Firefox (Nightly, with
         | uBlock Origin).
        
           | arendtio wrote:
           | Sounds interesting and indeed, when I take a fresh profile,
           | the website loads just fine. So I suppose some one of my
           | settings or some extension causes the issue.
           | 
           | Thanks for the hint.
           | 
           | Edit: I don't quite get it yet. Even starting my default
           | profile in safe-mode (disables all extensions and themes),
           | the page doesn't work.
           | 
           | The dev console shows this error:                 Failed to
           | execute 'postMessage' on 'DOMWindow': The target origin
           | provided ('https://account.vorwerk.com') does not match the
           | recipient window's origin ('https://www.vorwerk.com').
           | 
           | So I am pretty sure it must be some kind of configuration
           | that is causing the issue, but so far I didn't find the
           | related option in about:config
        
       | canada_dry wrote:
       | For Canadians... I love this one:                  ENTER YOUR
       | POSTAL CODE:          A1A1A1 <- ERR!          A1A 1A1 <- ERR!
       | A1A-1A1 YOU MAY PASS.
       | 
       | Lazy %@$# front-end devs that can't reformat the input!
        
         | shric wrote:
         | I'd say it's the backend's job to accept any of those and
         | reformat accordingly. If you rely on the frontend the backend
         | would still have to validate it anyway.
        
           | IggleSniggle wrote:
           | Yup. If you're going to do validation on the frontend, it
           | should be for the _sole_ purpose of improving user
           | experience, not for making life worse!
        
         | ceejayoz wrote:
         | My email address has a dash in the domain and it's remarkable
         | how many sites (and big ones, too!) reject it as an invalid
         | domain.
         | 
         | Discover.com, for example, rejected it when I did a card
         | application, but disabling JavaScript let it go through on the
         | server-side validation. Bloody weird.
        
           | xoa wrote:
           | Really the entire idea of client/server-side email
           | "validation" kind of seems like an ancient, cockroach-like
           | anti-pattern that is impossible to stamp out. Like, what is
           | the problem they're even solving? One validates email
           | addresses by sending an email with a token the user then acts
           | on. There are useful things to do with emails, like checking
           | against already registered ones (including any blacklists),
           | but I can't think of any that would result in any in-page
           | user feedback since that would generally be a dumb
           | information leak. Like if someone tries to register an
           | already registered email, send an email about it don't leak
           | that it's registered.
           | 
           | And as well as being useless most such scripts seem to date
           | back a long ways and have very lazy and fixed assumptions
           | about what constitutes a valid address. I mean, I've never
           | been a fan of the explosion of TLDs, but it's also a reality
           | and they're all valid. Even on the left side of the @ a
           | surprising number of scripts seem to fail on things that are
           | perfectly acceptable characters.
           | 
           | Strikes me as one of the many little minor GUI traps where
           | new designers get carried away with the power of scripts and
           | do without asking if they should, then further get too clever
           | by half.
        
             | handrous wrote:
             | Lots of these kinds of things--at least for companies that
             | aren't just copying others' patterns blindly--are the
             | result of multiple support calls/emails/tickets. The
             | tickets, in this case, would be users complaining about
             | your service being broken when in fact they messed up their
             | email address and don't realize it. There are also some
             | cases in which you want to use the address immediately to
             | reduce friction (as with sending receipts or shipping data
             | for an order by a "guest" user without an account) without
             | first sending a verify-address email.
             | 
             | My personal preference is to let the user know why you
             | think the email address looks wrong and give them some way
             | to override your judgement and submit anyway. It's more
             | work, but it gives you all the benefits of rejecting "bad"
             | addresses while minimizing the harm of false-positives from
             | your bad-address-spotting code (it's very slightly annoying
             | to people with odd-looking addresses, but not that big a
             | deal). This also lets you go beyond validating the form of
             | the email address, to alert on common typos that _might_ be
             | legitimate (and which can sneak in even if you make the
             | user type the address twice).  "gmial.com looks like it
             | might be a mistake; are you sure you got that right?" Or
             | "yaho.com". Or even just Levenshtein-distance check a bunch
             | of common email domains and alert any that are close, but
             | not exact. You annoy whoever has an actual address at those
             | domains, but save a bunch more people who screwed up.
        
               | cge wrote:
               | This has been common for mailing addresses: with a
               | parsing and validation system, the site will tell the
               | user "We think you entered ... as your address; we think
               | your address should be this: ...", along with options to
               | keep the original entry or use the suggestion. This has
               | the advantage of catching mistakes, not making unusual
               | addresses unusual, and letting the user know if the site
               | is interpreting what they entered in a way that won't
               | actually work (eg, leaving off something important, or
               | ordering components badly).
        
             | Shacklz wrote:
             | > like an ancient, cockroach-like anti-pattern that is
             | impossible to stamp out.
             | 
             | I feel like you just described email (or rather, "the"
             | email spec, as if there was a single one) in general.
             | 
             | Yes it obviously still serves its purpose but what consists
             | a valid email-address (let alone email) is specified in
             | such a godawful way that every application that I've seen
             | in the wild trying to address this problem somehow fails at
             | it (sometimes in negligible, often in very gross ways).
             | 
             | If devs all over the world manage to screw it up over and
             | over again, maybe it's just time to call it quits and
             | acknowledge that the spec is broken?
        
               | xoa wrote:
               | > _I feel like you just described email (or rather, "the"
               | email spec, as if there was a single one) in general._
               | 
               | But the concept of email is extremely useful, valuable,
               | understandable, and it's standardized and out of the
               | centralized control so common for anything developed
               | these days. I'd be happy to see some sort of email 2.0,
               | cleaned up, with modern encryption by default and so on
               | that served as a replacement. But I don't know of anybody
               | even proposing such a thing. Instead the rage is to
               | create yet another fucking instant messenger or slack
               | thing or whatever.
               | 
               | Everyone knows the spec is ancient and has had a lot
               | grafted onto it. But it's not going anywhere without a
               | good replacement and even with that the transition would
               | take a very, very long time. So as is so very, very often
               | the case in computing we just have to deal with that.
        
             | Nadya wrote:
             | > Even on the left side of the @ a surprising number of
             | scripts seem to fail on things that are perfectly
             | acceptable characters.
             | 
             | I've had an input require a minimum of 3 characters on the
             | left side of the @ to register. My email was just
             | "me@example.com" using my own domain name. A perfectly
             | valid email address. I am also unable to sign up for Id.me
             | for the IRS because it rejects both of my personal email
             | addresses. I cannot register to create NPM packages for the
             | same reason. I also cannot sign up for Vercel either. I
             | cannot sign up to Vercel via Github and when I try to sign
             | up by email it says the account already exists. When I
             | attempt to do a password recovery for the email it says
             | "Sorry, we are unable to validate that email." So the
             | original error of "account already exists" is actually
             | wrong - the account doesn't exist and can't exist because
             | they aren't able to validate the email for it.
             | 
             | My personal emails aren't even "weird" ones like ones with
             | an emoji or punycode domain or non-Latin character sets.
             | 
             | I hate with a fiery, burning passion every site that
             | attempts to do any kind of email validation beyond simply
             | sending me an email and letting me click a link to verify
             | my email exists.
        
               | Gaelan wrote:
               | Reminds me of the USPS vending machines in the post
               | office, which helpfully obfuscate my email address,
               | xyz@example.com, to xyz***@example.com
        
               | epse wrote:
               | Similar situation here. My address is s@myname.tld where
               | is is the first letter of my name. So may rejects
        
               | cge wrote:
               | >I hate with a fiery, burning passion every site that
               | attempts to do any kind of email validation beyond simply
               | sending me an email and letting me click a link to verify
               | my email exists.
               | 
               | Yet at the same time, that's the one important validation
               | that infuriatingly many sites don't do.
               | 
               | I once lost a protracted argument with the US Department
               | of Education who absolutely refused to stop sending me
               | private personal financial aid and academic details of a
               | complete stranger who mistakenly gave them a common
               | outlook.com email address that I have. As far as I can
               | tell, in their view, since the user had put in a valid
               | email address, that was their email address, and just
               | because it was my email address didn't mean I was
               | authorized to have it removed from the account. I
               | continue to receive the person's private information from
               | the state, colleges, and predatory businesses.
               | 
               | In fact, the number of mistaken accounts that get linked
               | with that email address is fascinating. Paypal UK
               | apparently does not send email validation requests before
               | associating email addresses with accounts. Nordstrom does
               | not. Internal divisions of the North Carolina Department
               | of Insurance does not. UK Revenue and Customs apparently
               | does not. Many of the larger organizations that, even
               | more infuriatingly, always send emails from noreply
               | addresses, and give no other way of contacting them other
               | than logging into your account.
        
             | lmm wrote:
             | > what is the problem they're even solving?
             | 
             | The problem they're solving is that a lot of people just
             | enter their email wrong and then wonder why they didn't get
             | the signup email.
             | 
             | > Like if someone tries to register an already registered
             | email, send an email about it don't leak that it's
             | registered.
             | 
             | This is something that's cargo-culted far too often. Maybe
             | for some services it's worth keeping secret which emails
             | are signed up, but for most it isn't.
        
               | manigandham wrote:
               | Privacy is always important. And validation doesn't stop
               | typos either.
        
               | wruza wrote:
               | _The problem they 're solving is that a lot of people
               | just enter their email wrong and then wonder why they
               | didn't get the signup email._
               | 
               | <orange>"This doesn't look like a correct email address
               | that our clients _usually_ use. Please re-check it again
               | and proceed if you're sure." </>
               | 
               |  _for most it isn 't_
               | 
               | It depends more on an email address, than on a service
               | type, because it's a part of a personal information that
               | a person owns.
        
               | mewpmewp2 wrote:
               | I'd prefer to just have it. Seems decently important for
               | me privacy wise. I as a customer don't want others to be
               | able to test whether I have signed up somewhere and also
               | it is much better security wise and not leaking business
               | data.
               | 
               | And most times, it is standard practice to hide sign ups,
               | luckily.
        
           | sneak wrote:
           | Lots of websites reject email addresses at entirely valid
           | domain names as invalid, too, such as any at some of the new
           | TLDs like .email.
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | I'm a little more inclined to forgive that, but dashes in
             | the domain have been valid for decades.
        
               | Symbiote wrote:
               | Since the start, even.
               | 
               | bell-atl.com is one of the oldest domains still in use,
               | registered in 1986.
        
             | whatatita wrote:
             | So many websites provide some TLD validation but don't keep
             | it up to date. Using .xyz is an exercise in frustration.
        
             | indymike wrote:
             | Yep. One of our salespeople had a fit because a prospect
             | couldn't get emails from him. The return message said "we
             | do not accept email from the .io top level domain".
        
           | mcbishop wrote:
           | My email address is "_@" followed by a domain name with a
           | dash followed by the "shop" domain ending. It gets rejected a
           | lot, but I won't give it up. It's a good indicator of whether
           | I should spend more time at the website.
        
         | dan-robertson wrote:
         | The U.K. government does this a ton with random reference
         | numbers, even on their new (mostly good) sites and it drives me
         | up the wall. Oftentimes they will give you these numbers with
         | spaces but the form will not let you enter it with spaces (so
         | it will fail if you copy-paste), or even worse the form will
         | have a size limit so if you paste your 10 digit number with two
         | spaces, the last two digits will be chopped off so it will fail
         | again when you remove the spaces.
         | 
         | Another problem is phone numbers: if you want to use some
         | autofill functionality, your phone number will often include
         | the country code part but the field won't allow a + (maybe in
         | this case the autofill feature should drop the country code
         | (and add a 0) or replace the + with 00).
         | 
         | I'm not actually sure about the significance of the space in
         | U.K. postcodes. I feel like it shouldn't be significant as one
         | can imagine a regex for the two parts,
         | /([A-Z]+[0-9]+)\s*([0-9][A-Z]+)/, but I then there are
         | exceptions like EC1R.
        
           | wruza wrote:
           | My favorite is a video cutter software that has two four-
           | sectioned inputs for start/end times, like hh:mm:ss.ttt. You
           | enter e.g. 00:17:44.500 into "start", deleting minutes
           | section with DEL, because it's full with zeroes. And then you
           | can't enter 17 into end-minutes field, because video length
           | is 21:30 and 17:30 is less than 17:44.500, which is bad. You
           | have to first del-fix end-seconds and then go back to
           | minutes. But wait, you want to cut to 17:50, but 21:50 is
           | more than the video length (21:30), so as you type 50 it
           | makes it into obvious 05! You have to del-fix minutes to 20,
           | del-fix seconds to 50 (now you're half-good), go back to
           | minutes and del-fix these to 17. Milliseconds are no-brainer
           | from there, don't worry (but do not forget to unfocus the
           | input, because otherwise it doesn't apply). Sadly it still
           | cuts along nearest keyframes only, but hey, at least it
           | works.
           | 
           | If you think that I'm just kidding, it's Gihosoft Video
           | Cutter, one of _10 best video cutters_ out there.
        
           | Symbiote wrote:
           | Here is the official UK postcode regex:
           | ^([Gg][Ii][Rr]
           | 0[Aa]{2})|((([A-Za-z][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-
           | Yj-y][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][0-9][A-Za-z])|([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-
           | Yj-y][0-9]?[A-Za-z])))) [0-9][A-Za-z]{2})$
           | 
           | The second part is always 3 characters. The first part can be
           | 2, 3 or 4 (B1, B30, SW2, SW11, EC1A).
        
           | maccard wrote:
           | Dvla... They ask you to enter the number on your form,
           | without a prefix that is printed on it, and then to enter the
           | payment amount that you think you owe them. No confirmation,
           | no validation...
        
       | Weryj wrote:
       | I absolutely hated that, guess that's a success.
        
       | mkaszkowiak wrote:
       | I gave up after the "age and birth date don't match" pop-up. Nice
       | site :)
        
       | java-man wrote:
       | I feel like I've been in this experiment for the last 20 years...
        
         | systemvoltage wrote:
         | I have a personal punishment policy for any obvious violation
         | of UX/UI - they will permanently and irrevokably lose me as a
         | customer. Even if they fix it, I won't budge. Leadership needs
         | to use their own products and if they allow this to go to
         | production, I wonder what they're doing behind the scenes.
         | Small battles that I pick, but by god it is so satisfying.
        
           | doomroot wrote:
           | So a small shop that can only pay 1 fresh bootcamp dev who is
           | trying their hardest doesn't get your business because they
           | can't keep up with several hundred Frontend google devs.
           | Seems a little silly and absolutist.
        
             | bschwindHN wrote:
             | To be honest google makes pretty awful frontends so I'd say
             | the small shop has an advantage here.
        
             | benhurmarcel wrote:
             | A small shop should just get a service like Squarespace or
             | similar, not pay a dev.
        
             | MattGaiser wrote:
             | Eh, a very basic form can offer a solid (if ugly) user
             | experience if you do not need too much validation.
        
             | analog31 wrote:
             | It's a win-win. The small shop also can't afford to deal
             | with this customer. Not to disparage either, but a first
             | lesson for small businesses is that you can't chase every
             | customer.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | Most horrible UX comes from too much software, not to
             | little. If it was a single dev, they'd probably not have
             | time to implement all the popups, dickbars, newsletter
             | reminders, full screen interruptions, and dark patterns.
             | Horrible UX takes large engineering effort.
        
             | contravariant wrote:
             | There are levels of badness that can only be achieved
             | through sheer talent or diligence.
             | 
             | Both are red flags.
        
             | systemvoltage wrote:
             | It is usually the opposite - large enterprises have
             | horrible UX than a mom & pop small shop. Furthermore, just
             | because you're small doesn't mean you cannot fix UX of the
             | user. I don't throw my money at them in charity or pity for
             | being small. There are some great small businesses, and
             | many not so great. Absolutist argument is perhaps in the
             | point you're making.
             | 
             | I run a small side business with $2k/month in revenue and I
             | damn well make sure that there are no annoyances to the
             | user. This is _standard_ expectation and has nothing to do
             | with how big or small you are. We should all strive for
             | excellence and not perpetuate mediocrity.
             | 
             | Regarding silliness - it would be silly to keep going to a
             | restaurant that has rude service. That's what you're saying
             | essentially.
        
             | juped wrote:
             | "several hundred google frontend devs" are the teams that
             | cause these atrocities
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | Wow. That is painful.
       | 
       | I recognized a number of those issues from a number of sites I've
       | visited.
        
       | devoutsalsa wrote:
       | It's better than some websites I've used!
        
       | zwaps wrote:
       | My newest object of rage on many websites: the subscribe to our
       | newsletter pop up you now get whenever your mouse moves to close
       | the tab
        
       | dt3ft wrote:
       | Masochistic xD
        
       | dustractor wrote:
       | 7:03
       | 
       | amazing.
        
       | everyone wrote:
       | Too realistic!
        
       | dr_orpheus wrote:
       | Every time you click the "help" button its just says "Please
       | wait, there are X people in line." and just keeps going up every
       | time.
        
       | gbvy wrote:
       | Missed one worst-practice: I was able to paste a password
        
       | lizardking wrote:
       | I hate it. I love it.
        
       | mabedan wrote:
       | I know I'm supposed to hate it, but at first glance the color
       | scheme reminded me of NC and I ... I ... liked it
        
       | leff_f wrote:
       | cannot stop laughing!
        
         | leff_f wrote:
         | Expand in the place of the close button is the best part.
        
           | davidmurdoch wrote:
           | And the best part is that I clicked it twice thinking the
           | second time would do what I wanted.
        
       | mike_d wrote:
       | Oh, I wondered what our UI designers had been working on for the
       | past month...
        
       | jliptzin wrote:
       | Only thing missing is deleting everything you entered into the
       | entire form any time there is an error message
        
         | gpm wrote:
         | No, clearing 2 random fields every time.
         | 
         | You probably won't notice that way ;)
         | 
         | Had a real website for a real store do that to me a few days
         | ago.
        
         | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
         | And an obnoxious GDPR message with intentionally confusing
         | sliders (am i disabling all tracking or enabling all tracking?
         | Why is the 'accept all' button in the placement of the 'accept'
         | button, why can I not just hide this form and not complete it
         | at all)
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | brailsafe wrote:
       | Couldn't do it. Burn everything that does this.
        
       | ihunter2839 wrote:
       | 4:52, but I had already given up on the first page once and then
       | had to give it another go. Like others mentioned here, a lot of
       | these are unfortunately common in the wild - the ones that always
       | set me into a rage are placeholder texts that remain in the field
       | as I type and the inability to tab through fields.
        
       | marsdepinski wrote:
       | Good one. Bravo!
        
       | inoffensivename wrote:
       | 5:08 of my life that I'm not getting back.
       | 
       | Congratulations, that was infuriating :)
        
       | okareaman wrote:
       | Somewhere a web designer is thinking, this is a lot like our
       | website. What is so wrong with it?
        
       | jtvjan wrote:
       | I love the double indirection on the cookie dialog. You're used
       | to the small, unhighlighted option being the one to click to
       | reject cookies, but here the question is asked the other way
       | around, making the big button the one you want to click instead.
        
       | dshanahan wrote:
       | 4:11
       | 
       | OMFG this is brilliant and somehow made me happy and angry at the
       | same time. Well done.
        
       | CodeWriter23 wrote:
       | I can appreciate Nihilism-derived Humor.
        
       | c0nsumer wrote:
       | I think I found a bug. When I put 4-Aug-1978 for birthdate, and
       | 41 for age, it said age and birthday don't match.
       | 
       | It validated successfully on 42.
       | 
       | Although maybe that's part of the game?
        
         | dr_orpheus wrote:
         | Not sure, I didn't want to do math so I just put in todays date
         | and an age of 0. Worked!
        
           | nneonneo wrote:
           | Side effect: you've now created a child account and will have
           | to wait 18 years for all of the website features to unlock!
           | And don't dare make a second account, or you will get banned
           | for sockpuppeting!
           | 
           | At least one popular mobile game has a policy that the
           | account's birthdate will not be changed under basically any
           | circumstance, and child accounts are severely restricted
           | compared to adult accounts. Parents wanting to take over
           | their kid's account (happens more often than you'd think) end
           | up seriously frustrated with the restrictions.
        
             | kbelder wrote:
             | Yeah, my daughter has been eighteen since she was five.
        
         | jammaloo wrote:
         | If you were born in August 1978, you would currently be 42
         | years old.
        
       | Causality1 wrote:
       | I appreciate this. I'm so sick of seeing links hit the top of HN
       | that are utterly broken in landscape orientation because some
       | stupid pop-up renders with the close button off-screen.
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-26 23:01 UTC)