[Update: 9 November 2006] The developers of the website have sorted out the issues regarding the address forms.

Christmas is a time for CD filing. But this year I’ll need some more filing materials, because last year used all my spare CD sleeves up, and the library files are now close to bursting.

I buy all my CD filing gear from Arrowfile and decided that today would be the time to order them. Their on-line store is okay, but their checkout address handling is abysmal. I have my address on record with them, but it’s a bit mangled: starting with Inverness as the first line. It’s not possible to change an existing address during checkout – you can only add an address, and then use that for either invoicing or delivery.

Here’s part of the page where you start entering your new address:

The world it seems is full of stars, but it doesn’t tell me why. And look at how small the entry fields are. Yes, you can type in more than 7 characters, but having such visual constraints is nonsense. Even worse, the Postcode field has space for just 4 or 5 characters. Why does Country appear above Postcode? Because if you change Country, then the page reloads, and you get a form like this:

The Postcode has now moved to above the Country, and I think the House Name has now become Address Line 1. Ughh. Yes, there’s still the 7 character limit, but to make life more interesting, it’s in a smaller font! This form also appears when you complete a UK address in the previous form.

Final step: click ‘Use New Address’. What happens? Nothing. No new address. Not in Firefox. Although it does work in Safari.

Remember that mangled address? Well, it turns out that it’s a display issue with the website. The address that gets stored and retrieved for editing seems to be okay.

Paraspar, the site developers, win awards for sites like Hotel Chocolat. But probably not for this one, eh?