Validation - schmalidation

Today I had to send a schema to the school my kid will join this fall. This was done on the web and it started pretty well, they even mentioned "GNU Linux" and Firefox as supporting platforms.

But when I came to enter a date I entered "2011-08-15" and going to the next field it changed to "20.11.0815". DD.MM.YY or DD.MM.YYYY is the most common date format here in Norway. It may not be as odd as the US one but it's still stupid, annoying and not a standard. Javascript based validation may not be too bad as a first line for data entry but when it's messing up the data it's not so good. And there was no hint at which format they wanted.

So, next page; Address entries. Yet another required field: "Poststed" aka "Postal place" / city. But in front of that field it's the post code and in Norway, the code is national so entering that will tell which place you live.

Icing on the cake: You have to live in Oslo anyway, so the next entry field, required aswell, was which borough we live in and the fifteen in Oslo was listed.

So, entering all this, hitting "receipt by SMS" and a thank you page was accompanied by "BEEP BEEP" from my phone. On that page they tell me that I will hear from the school when they have received the schema.

Which they do by (e)mail.

!Solid

Today we'll have a brief look at http://www.solidunderworld.com/

Ah yes, a "lifestyle" website made by morons who think that ordinary people actually care about their efforts to build a brand.  This website manages to be almost entirely content free.  Did these people actually sit down and actually think about WHY someone might visit their website?

If you have something to sell, chances are I am interested in the merchandise.  What do you expect me to do here?  I need a new jacket.  Do you really think I am interested in chasing you around Facebook to inquire about it.  Or engage in a "conversation" on Twitter?  Do you really think I want to watch pointless videos?   This isn't "engaging" -- it is annoying.

If I were to mention you on Twitter it would only be to publicly ridicule your offensively brain-dead web presence.

Look, if you are going to sell clothes, then sell clothes.  Would you hide your clothes in your brick and mortar stores?  Why not?  Oh, because it wouldn't make much business sense.  I see.  How about the business sense of this website?