Worst. Form. Ever. · 294 words posted 05/09/2006 06:55 PM
Brian Eno and David Byrne released My Life in the Bush With Ghosts twenty-five years ago. A newly packaged and remixed CD is now in the stores, along with a promotional website.
As befits a nostalgia project, the registration form is a throwback to bad-old-days of the late 90s, when designers often put flash gimmickry ahead of helping the user accomplish the task at hand. This form isn’t just awkward; it’s actively hostile.
- The form fields have no labels other than the text within each field; once you click into the field the label disappears. If you happen to tab into a field you’ve already filled out your input disappears and is replaced by the field name.
- The text is small. I mean, really small.
- For some reason, possibly art, all text input is forced to upper case. Does this mean the username and password will be case-insensitive? Who knows?
- You specify your location on a map that’s “upside down.” I understand there are reasons related to the content of the music for showing the map as it is, but my guess is that most users will find the orientation of the map another obstacle to registration.
- You can’t submit the form without agreeing to the site’s terms and conditions, but you’ll never see the terms and conditions if you’re browsing in Safari or Firefox with pop-up windows blocked. I eventually figured out that I had to turn of pop-up blocking for this site, but even after clicking “I agree” in the popup window I still couldn’t submit the form.
That’s a shame. Once registered you can apparently download tracks from the album to remix under a Creative Commons license. But I couldn’t get past the form.
Seriously, who builds junk like this anymore?
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