{"id":65,"date":"2009-06-07T17:58:32","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T00:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kai.mactane.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/07\/dont-waste-my-time-with-email-confirmation-fields\/"},"modified":"2011-11-05T11:06:41","modified_gmt":"2011-11-05T18:06:41","slug":"dont-waste-my-time-with-email-confirmation-fields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/07\/dont-waste-my-time-with-email-confirmation-fields\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Waste My Time With Email Confirmation Fields"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just ran into yet another form on a web page that looked like this:<\/p>\n<form class=\"blog\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>First Name<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Last Name<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Email Address<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Confirm Email Address<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item1\">\n\t\t\t<label>Address Line 1<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t&#8230; and so on\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/form>\n<p><br clear=\"all\"><br \/>\nThese things drive me nuts. Once I&#8217;ve typed my email address in the first time, I just type Shift-Home to highlight the entire field, Ctrl-C to copy, then tab to the next field and paste it in. That&#8217;s still four more keystrokes than I should have to bother with.<\/p>\n<p>Why do we never see forms like this?<\/p>\n<form class=\"blog\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>First Name<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Confirm First Name<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Last Name<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Confirm Last Name<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Street Address<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t<label>Confirm Street Address<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t<input type=\"text\">\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"item2\">\n\t\t\t&#8230; and so on\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/form>\n<p><br clear=\"all\"><br \/>\nWhy not just make the user confirm <em>everything<\/em>? What&#8217;s so special about email addresses that we have to type them twice?<\/p>\n<p>My simple answer: <strong>nothing<\/strong>. Don&#8217;t do this. The only reason password fields have a second &#8220;confirm&#8221; field is that password fields mask the input, so the user can&#8217;t see what they&#8217;re typing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just ran into yet another form on a web page that looked like this: First Name Last Name Email Address Confirm Email Address Address Line 1 &#8230; and so on These things drive me nuts. Once I&#8217;ve typed my email address in the first time, I just type Shift-Home to highlight the entire field, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[63,39,57,8,10,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}