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.

Rant over….

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.

If you have a blog of your own then I recommend enabling OpenID (I used the wpOpenID plug-in for WordPress – very easy to set-up.)

edit: I’ve also enabled Gravatars

Here are some really nice examples. Or for my Hello World example see the movie below:

This QuickTime movie is actually a live QuartzComposer patch. Viewing it requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).

The particle generator should vary the velocity of the particles depending on the level of the sound input. Try talking, or whistling while it runs.

You can also run them as screensavers.

(download the composition)

Cor Blimey guvnor – where’s the nearest eels, pie and mash in this manor?

Here’s the famous workflow:

1. You code your design to the w3c standards.
2. Check it in the (relatively) standards-compliant browsers.
3. Take a deep breath.
4. Check it in MS:IE
5. …weep, and spend the next two days hacking around IE’s quirks.

IE:7 is coming – and alas, it may not change the situation…

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.

(edit: Dean Edwards gives some interesting starting prices)

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.

Reading the posts being ripped apart in the comments is always fun though… The latest post – Internet Explorer and Connection Limits is a gem.

It’s good that Sony is beginning to realise that the PS2 should not be the exclusive access point for Central Station.

So I’ve added a turing test to the comments – a CAPTCHA.
Here’s where it came from.

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.)

Froogle U.K. has gone Beta.

It’s a search engine for retailers’ products:

e.g. Arrrhh!!

.Mac’s storage has been upped to 250MB.

“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.