I was presented with the chance to sign a petition for Net Neutrality. I WANTED to sign the petition, but was unable to, because at the bottom was a form that consisted of four blank spaces. No instructions as to what to put in the spaces, just the spaces. If you don’t put the right stuff in the spaces, you get a redirect telling you to go back and try again. Here’s the page the form is on.
Does anyone know what you’re supposed to put in the form? And does anyone know why the form’s designers think people will instinctively know what to put in the form? Because I sure don’t. I tried a few things, none of them worked. It seems like a very stupid way to run a petition drive.
Weird, now the form shows EXACTLY what to put in each blank. But I swear, the first time I encountered it, those instructions were not there.
No, when I checked the link to see if I’d got it right, I saw that the instructions were printed right inside the form. But they are not present in the form as linked to from my email, I have no idea why. I can only imagine it’s because I keep my RL email on Microsoft Outlook but use Firefox for the Straight Dope and other recreational uses.
Oh, and if you fill out the form and click on the link it sends you to a page where they beg you for money. Pretty standard with political stuff … they ALWAYS beg for money.
What browser were you using the first time? The form is using an attribute unique to HTML5 to add the text instructions to the fields. Maybe your browser just hiccupped on the code.
It fails in IE9, works in Chrome. It’s not just a hiccup, it’s just one of the many problems trying to get cross-browser compatibility. That’s why I don’t get involved in that stuff anymore, too many details to keep track of for each browser, and new problems with each upgrade. The IE security issues give me enough problems, others can deal with the UI aspects.
OP, how did you capture that screen shot of the page? The only ways I know to take screen shots, you only get a picture of the portion of the page that’s visible on the screen at the moment, not a picture of the whole page.
I seem to have some excess ignorance here which needs to be fought.
Don’t just make up email addresses. I made the mistake many years ago of making my email address <myname>@gmail.com (seemed like a great idea at the time!) and these days I am constantly getting signed up for crap by people who (presumably) share the same name using it as a fake address. :mad: