Lazy Coders Who Can’t Deal With Zip+4
Friday, May 8th, 2015
Weren’t most coders were born AFTER ZIP+4 was implemented ??
ZIP+4 has been in place for over THIRTY YEARS.
ZIP+4 code, introduced in 1983, includes the five digits of the ZIP code, a hyphen, and four more digits that determine a more specific location within a given ZIP code.
So WHY don’t coders implement web-forms to accommodate this thirty-year-old standard?
Seriously.
The developer of the webpage from which the screenshot above was taken (Diamond Mind) even specified TEN DIGITS for the zip code form field!
<input value="" name="postal_code" maxlength="10" class="dm-fb-zip-code" id="dm-fb-zip-code" type="TEXT">
Why go to the trouble of writing a validation script for a zip code field without going to the trouble of limiting the number of input characters?
More troubling, why specify 10-character maxlength for a five-digit validated field?
And check this out, the developer specified a maxlength, but didn’t bother to specify “digits only”:
Good Grief Charlie Brown.
Over a year since I wrote this post. Still applies in every way. A week doesn’t go by when I’m confronted with a poorly coded zip form field… Codecademy please!