City field

I'm trying to create a blog entry from Sherwood Park, AB, Canada, and it won't let me save the entry, just because it doesn't recognize the name. I then tried Edmonton (Capital of Alberta, Canada) which is right near Sherwood Park, and it also doesn't recognize it. Please allow storage of the blog entry, even if you don't recognize the name... perhaps allow entry by clicking on a map to say where it is?

OK, my mistake. Most sites allow you to enter the State field and use it as the Province in Canada... for Canadian entries, you must leave the state field blank.

Cool site!

written by

bwatt on November 18, 2005

You're absolutely right. Those Location fields have been raising usability flags from day one.

There used to be only a single field to enter a place name, be it city, city/state, city/country, etc. and it would accept input in whatever format the user wanted. Sounds good in theory, but it actually ends up confusing people and leaving them stuck, searching for instruction.

I'm still not completely satisfied with the three boxes, for the reason you just found. There's not enough indication that you can leave them blank (and sometimes it's Better to leave them blank).

I think the ultimate solution will be a workflow where you pick a city from the map first, then click a link to add your report. You can actually do that now, but it's not very discoverable at the moment.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. And I'll see about getting those Canadian provences hooked up as "States"!

Jason

written by

Jason Kester on November 19, 2005

isn't Canada just a big U.S. state anyways? lol

written by scootdown on April 12, 2006

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Heading South?