I hit this *so* many times and it always drives me mad. Here’s the thing: email addresses are not case-sensistive. i.e. FOO@.BAR.COM is the same as foo@bar.com and FoO@bAr.CoM
Web designers always seem to forget this though – and it’s incredibly irritating, especially if you have a browser which has some form of ‘remember my details and auto-complete them’ function.
I can understand why it happens though, and here’s why. As a coder you think of things in terms of types and logic.
Types: Number-types are generally either floats (floating point numbers: 1.2, 3.1415, etc…) or integers (whole numbers 1, 2, 100232 etc…). Computers ‘think’ of numbers differently depending on whether they are whole number or not. Bits of text are often thought of as ‘strings’ (‘strings’ of characters) – think of a string of pearls where each pearl is a character.
Logic: Coders use logic to define behaviour in code – they set down rules for the computer to follow. i.e. ‘if this thing over here is equal to that thing over there then do this other thing.’ Many of these logical statements are combined to create behaviours that make-up software products – from your mobile phone, to this weblog, to your TV.
Anyway – back to the point – humans forget that computers see things in different ways – the human brain with it’s amazing ability for language and symbol analysis sees ‘Hello’ as having the same meaning as ‘hello’, whereas to a computer these two strings are completely different, so to a computer the correct response to the question ” is ‘Hello’ equal to ‘hello’ ” is “No.” Normally that’s fine in logic terms – the two strings are not identical – but when it comes to email addresses – this logic lets us down. It doesn’t matter what case the letters are, what we should be asking the computer is “does this string that the user gave *spell* the same as the string we are using as a reference?”
Of course a clever coder will take the case of the letters out of the equation by using a function which makes the two strings to compare both upper-case before it checks them for equality – so however the user types the email address (as long as it’s spelled correctly), the logic will come back and say – “yes – these two email addresses are the same.” This is such a common task that there are always (I assume) ready-made functions available to the coder in any language to turn a string into an upper-case string.
It just takes a little thought to make sure that you apply that function when checking email addressees. You’d be surprised how often it doesn’t happen though…
The same thing happens in other problem domains – e.g. usernames – my router has an admin account which allows me to configure it – let’s call it ‘admin’. If I use ‘Admin’ it fails to authenticate me. Usernames should not be case-sensitive, whereas passwords should.
Web servers / filenames are another case: http://www.foo.com/badger/ should be the same as http://www.foo.com/BADGER/ – Mac OS computers treat these two the same – UNIX machines don’t.
To humans, most strings are not case-sensitive, whereas to computers they are. Coders should think about this more often. Alas it’s easy for them to be caught out, since we don’t think like computers, and computers are ruthlessly logical and unforgiving when it comes to rules (which is why they work). They’re a bit like traffic wardens in that respect.
Not that anyone in their right mind reads this blog, but just in case:
I’ve enabled OpenID as a method for authenticating when posting a comment. I look forward to this distributed ID system becoming more common throughout the net.
The WebStandards Project have now unleashed The Acid2 Test.
Dave Hyatt (Safari’s Lead Developer) is relishing the challenge and seems hell-bent on making Safari the first browser to render the test properly. Even better – (and unusually for an Apple employee) – he’s telling us all about it on his blog.
Any other Apple Employee showing the same level of transparency would be instantly sacked. But because WebCore is OpenSource he can, and does – and that’s groovy.
The flip-side of the coin is the IEBlog – a strange place indeed, which I have a morbid fascination with – no two posts seem to be written by the same person and it doesn’t even validate.
CentralStation – The PS2′s network gaming hub is now available on the web, or rather the Events and Player Reporting section is. The missing articles/features are basically marketing fluff anyway.
It’s good that Sony is beginning to realise that the PS2 should not be the exclusive access point for Central Station.
Alas – I’ve got bored (strangely) of wading through tens of comment authorisations every day – each of which is a variation on poker, fake pharmaceuticals and pr0n.
There are accessibility issues with the CAPTCHA – because it can exclude partially-sighted or blind readers – but I hope it’s not a permanent solution. (I hoping that Kitten’s captcha for the blind will become an official WordPress Plug-in soon.)
It’s sad – because it’s another barrier to posting (even though it’s not too difficult) – but I’m hoping it’ll work (at least in the short term.)
“The combined storage for your .Mac Mail and iDisk has been increased to 250 MB. That means you now have additional room for your email messages and mail attachments, web pages, and backups. Need even more storage? You also have the option of upgrading your .Mac account to 1 GB for US$49.95 per year.”
I was seriously thinking about letting my .mac sub lapse this month – but with the increase in storage seems to be less of a rip-off.
It’s not that much more space though, is it… The common comparison is with Google’s “free” 1GB of Mail storage.
I’m not so sure that it’s such a good comparison though: These services rely on the fact that not every user will fill their space to capacity (my GMail account is currently at 0% capacity!) – so the service provider can actually have less total capacity than would be theoretically required to satisfy all their customers. (Broadband ISPs do this too.)
Even geeks have problems filling a gig of Mail usefully, but your average Joe (or Joanna) could easily stuff a gig of Video onto dotMac for streaming.
Plus with dotMac you don’t get Scary Ads that may or may not be relevant to the email you were just sent.
It seems that you have to specifically divide the space yourself.
When I ran MovableType the comment spam was rampant – when I installed MTBlacklist (and auto-updated the blacklist) it was a bit better. MT was a bit of a monoculture – most people ran it – so it became a worthwhile target for spammers.
Then I moved to WordPress – and for two months not a single spam. A couple of days ago it started again – and this morning there were three new spam comments. I’ll take that as an indicator of the success of WordPress as a blogging solution.
I’m afraid that I’ve made it so that comments must be authorised by me – and I’m looking at using the WordPress Blacklist.
(Incidentally – Poker seems to be the new Viagra as far as spam goes.)
{Edit – }
I’ve had a go with some plug-ins for WordPress – and comments now will not appear until I have moderated them as OK.
Also – here is the source for a file I just hacked to generated an RSS feed for unmoderated comments – just put it in your WordPress Root (and get rid of the .txt extension)
The Internet Explorer team at Microsoft have a blog. And they want feedback about (Windows) IE….
If you have any interest in Web development, Please give them feedback about IE’s (lack of conformity to) standards – I have.
But please don’t go all frothy-mouthed – be polite and logical.
My top IE irks:
.lack of Alpha Support in PNGs.
.broken Box-Model
.< object > tag that either doesn’t work, or needs nasty hacks to work.
They’ve had a lot of feedback so far – and I think they’re beginning to realise that outside their team not everyone thinks that IE is a shiningly brilliant app.
Another major UK company that doesn’t seem to know it’s arse from it’s elbow:
I used to use a great little company called Amerada – They provided my Gas and Electricity (well they didn’t actually provide it – but they billed me for it.)
They had the forward-thinking idea of Online billing *only* (no paper) and could offer lower rates as a consequence.
Unfortunately Amerada were recently swallowed by Powergen – a larger, older Energy company. Their online billing system is…. somwhat different.
Here is an email I received today:
Subject: Your Powergen bill
Date: 28 February 2004 6:02:17 am GMT
Dear Powergen customer
Your latest bill is now ready to view. All you need to do is click on the link below and login.
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll be shown all your Powergen bills that can be viewed online. The most recent bill will always be at the top.
