Passwords are another OT one. I don’t mind them being double since you can’t proof read what you typed. What I’d like is the ability to switch off whether password fields show the letters or not.
The biggest danger to me isn’t someone reading it over my shoulder, but not remembering it. Being able to actually see whatever I come up with is a great memory aid. Actually now that I think about it, it wouldn’t be that hard to make a bookmarklet to convert password type input elements into text input elements.
Anyway back on topic. I see your point. I don’t like it, but I see it.
Because life is full of unnecessarily tedious things, this just adds to it. All those seconds add up to real annoyance. After a while your patience runs thin.
Ever fill out paper work and have to write your name and address 10 different times in the same forms? In the age of computers seems a pretty stupid way to go about it. The people responsible should be executed slowly and painfully via terminal writer’s cramp.
Ditto on neccessary evil. I for one do not copy/paste my e-mail address in the 2nd field because this feature has in fact helped me in quite a few cases where I did to my adress what the OP did to their second word.
Easy. These things only go out from things you’ve signed up for. If you didn’t get an email you signed up for, you get it wrong.
And, in my opinion, if you can’t take the time to look at your email and make sure you typed it right, then that’s your problem, and the rest of us shouldn’t have to support you. You shouldn’t even be typing out your email more than once per browser, anyways.
What’s really annoying are the places that explicitly block autofill on that line. You know, the feature that makes the fact that nearly every site requires you to sign up not so painful.
You know how you can accomplish chekcing for typoes? You’re going to have to send a confirmation email anyways, to make sure you’ve got a real email. So just use that as proof that I gave you the right address. Zero extra typing required.
Ah, but what if instead of BigT@Straightdope.com, you accidentally use BigY@Straightdope.com… and there is actually a BigY@Straightdope.com? Then that won’t help because they still will find that they had a legitimate email address to send the confirmation email to. When whoever answers the BigY@Straightdope.com gets the email, they will most likely just delete it, at which point the company will likely assume you just weren’t interested, and will go on with their day performing no action to follow up.
EDIT: Neat, I didn’t know emails autolinked like that.
I can retype my email addy faster than I can c&p it. What gets me is having to deal with a freaking pull down menu instead of just typing my two letter state abbreviation.
I still think it’s a useful feature, like retyping your password, even if it were true that most people copy-paste, autofill.
I always re-type instead of copy-paste. It’s nice for me.
It’s not just for the benefit of people who might mistype their email address occasionally (which I suspect is a lot of people; probably more people than realize it). The main reason is the company doesn’t want to lose customers forever simply because of a typo. If you get your name or password it’s rectifiable; but if you get your only piece of contact information wrong, the company has no way to contact you again. They want to really ensure you get that information right, which is why there’s the duplicate boxes and why autofill, and even copy-and-paste, are often disabled for those boxes. And given that it only costs me a couple seconds of my time, and might benefit me as well occasionally, I don’t begrudge them doing it.
It doesn’t bother me at all, because I’m at an age where stupid little mistakes have become increasingly common.
Step 1) I type in my address
Step 2) I quickly check it for typo’s, copy, tab, paste, tab, enter. For no particular reason I may or may not use the mouse. Makes no difference to me, I just go without giving it a moment’s thought.
Either way, the entire laboriously redundant process of Step 2 consumes about nine seconds of my precious time.
But email is not reliable. There are a lot of things that can go wrong between the system sending the email and you receiving it. Many systems don’t even use an email link confirmation system.
I can’t believe so many people copy/paste their email address from the initial box to the confirmation box. You’re defeating the purpose of a check system that is designed to help YOU.
You know, most pulldowns, you can tab to the pulldown and type in what you want it to say and it’ll automatically pull it down. As long as you’re typing in an option on the pulldown list, it’ll come up.
An average e-mail address probably has 20-25 characters. That shouldn’t take more than 2 or 3 seconds to type in.
IMO the mouse is a huge time waster and use of it should be avoided whenever possible.
I’d double that at least. Wikipedia suggests an average of 33 wpm, or roughly 165 cpm… with 22.5 characters average, it’d take 8.2 seconds. Factor in numbers, the @ symbol, and the period and it gets even longer.
That’s not to say that the confirmation is a bad idea, but it does take time. The people who have trouble with forms are usually not fast typists, further exacerbating the issue.
If you copy and paste into the “Reenter…” field, it’s you making the mistake, not the website. The confirmation field is for our benefit, as a chance to weed out your typos.
Autofill is a different story. If you’re competant as using autofills, however, stop kvetching – it’s taking you an extra half a second to reenter the email.
If you’re registering so many new accounts that those extra half seconds are adding up to a major productivity delay, congratulations! You’re a spambot!
I’d say the majority of forms I fill out online are like this. So then you do have to type it out at least once even if you have autofill. I’ve typod my own email address often enough that I don’t mind it at all.
