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Previous: Five Star Billiards product list | Main | Next: Wacky warning labels
April 9, 2004 12:34 AM
Broken: Salon Premium signup (fixed!)
Update June 8: Sumana Harihareswara, from Salon.com, writes us to say that this problem has been fixed:
Thank you for pointing out the problem with Salon's registration page on ThisIsBroken. As you may have noticed, we fixed the problem so now it'll work on Safari. I hope we cleaned the egg off our face in a relatively quick manner.
Thanks for the fix, Salon!
Here's the original post:
I tried signing up for Salon Premium yesterday and saw something unusual:
In the question, "Would you like to receive occasional e-mails regarding Salon Premium...", of course I wanted to select No. But both radio buttons were selected - Yes and No. I clicked on both and was unable to get either one to turn off.
(I went forward in the signup process anyway, and was blocked again when clicking "Submit" to confirm my credit card information brought me back to the same confirmation page.)
Thus I'm standing credit card in hand and still unable to sign up for Salon. This is broken.
P.S. I'm using Apple's Safari browser, v1.2.1, in OSX v10.3.3. Hardly an unusual configuration.
"Hmm, should we default it to yes or no?"
"I can see compelling reasons for both..."
"Then let's default it to both!"
"Brilliant!"
While it's not Safari's fault the HTML is broken, they should really have some sanity checking...
I emailed back and forth with Salon's customer support people about the post-sale part of this after i renewed my subscription and bought a gift sub for my sister. Don't expect a substantive email confirmation of anything as yet. All I got was a "Thanks for your recent transaction." Seriously, that's all it said; maybe not even that much.
The person I was talking with seemed puzzled as to why a guy might want a sort of summary "Thanks, here's what you bought and for how much; your subscription runs until 10/10/2010; your username is MrDo; here are the customer service web links." email.
I ended up mocking one up and sending it to them ("I'd like to receive something like this") and s/he said they would put it in place. No idea if they have.
The HTML is not broken, Safari is. Although the HTML erroneously has both radio buttons marked as checked, if the browser functioned correctly, that could not happen. Radio buttons are grouped by name (the group in question is called "notify") and only 1 radio button in a group can be checked. Radio buttons get their name from the old 50's era car radio buttons.
You should report this bug to Safari.
Who do you think has a more vested interest in fixing the bug.. Apple, which has plenty of other bug requests to get to, or Salon, which is losing money every day because of this bug?
I would say both are broken. Safari should check the LAST radio button that is sent as checked, which I think is how IE does it. Not that IE is always right, but if first one button is checked and then the browser gets ntofication that the next one is also checked, the second would be overridding the second. I guess they could make the argument that if more then one is checked there is obviously a bug in the code and don't check any.
Either way, my point is that both the code and browser are broken. Submit bug notices to both and whoever fixes it first - send them 35 bucks...
I looked for Safari v. 1.2.1 on Apple's Download page; I myself use only v. 1.1 and was looking for the newer one. I couldn't find it. Are you using a beta version? That could be a reason towards the bug.
Works fine on my Safari. I wouldn't blame an HTML design-fault on a browser - it simply doesn't work like that, if you're familiar with forms. (they probably caught it and fixed it in the last day or so)
That is an error in the HTML. That happens when the buttons are accidentially not placed in the same group. A simple one letter typo could have caused this mistake.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Five Star Billiards product list | Main | Next: Wacky warning labels
Wow... that's actually in the HTML code. Both of the radio buttons are set as "checked".
Honestly, I'm surprised Mozilla only manages to select one of the buttons. I'm not exactly sure how it chooses which one to select...
Posted by: codeman38 at April 9, 2004 01:02 AM