From: "Adrian Howard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
: Remember quite a few countries don't just have numbers in their
codes (e.g. UK has letters and a space too), and other countries don't
have : postcodes everywhere or at all (e.g. Ireland only has 1/2
digit "zone" numbers in Dublin and Cork I think).
:
: International addressing is a PITA :-)
:
: Personally I tend to go for
: a) supplying the countries where most of your users live with
something specific to them and as much validation as you can afford;
and
: b) a "generic" international form for everybody else with fairly
minimal validation.
Excellent advice, although I'd add to it:
c) allow your users to overwrite your validation and use the minimal
(or preferably, no) validation form.
There are many countries where:
- addresses are a political matter and you could offend your users by
validating them into the 'wrong' address. (E.g., Londonderry / Derry
in the UK; Galixia / Galicia in Spain)
- the postal authority's preferred addressing format doesn't really
work in actual life OR
- the postal authority has changed format and the real world hasn't
changed yet.
For example, in the UK the use of counties is 'deprecated' by the
Royal Mail but in fact many people prefer to include county in the
address, especially where towns of the same name exist in several
counties. On the other hand, many addresses don't include counties
(e.g., those in London) and people who live in unambiguous towns (e.g.
Leighton Buzzard, where I live) don't bother to write the county.
Furthermore, the county names often have two different ways of being
written ('Shropshire' or Salop'), get changed surprisingly often, and
can be subject to personal opinion (e.g., some diehards insisted on
using Rutland even after that county was abolished - and it's since
been reinstated). All of this is in theory disambiguated by our
complicated but precise postal codes, but the Royal Mail changes them
sometimes also.
Caroline Jarrett
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
01525 370379
Effortmark Ltd
Usability - Forms - Content
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