Type me if you can
There are a lot of buttons on the keyboard that you want to use. But in some input fields, characters are often unacceptable for various reasons (they are usually just used for official purposes). For example, in Windows, the characters “*” and “?” Cannot be used for file or directory names, because these characters are used to set masks.
Experienced geeks know the main cases by heart and do not come across. And computer novices often use such symbols, and get errors, which, by the way, are not always informative enough to understand what's the matter. But in any case, everybody ever opens a new program or website, where new, non-standard situations are possible.
It is quite logical not to let the user enter invalid characters that are specific to such fields. Quietly squeak on an invalid character and display a hint which characters you can use. A very simple, logical approach to the usability of interfaces, but for some reason rarely, when it can be seen in our reality. Most often this happens only when filling in strictly specified fields, for example, when entering phone numbers. Letters usually do not allow to enter there (about minus signs, plus there is a separate story in such masks;). Recalling my programmer past, I guess why this happens, the programmers just use the standard components already embedded in the development environment to set such fields. And when there is no standard component, no one will take care of user convenience.
The situation is deplorable, I hope that the developers who read this text will take note and pay attention to the problem. A programmer, having spent 10 minutes on setting an input mask, will save hours, and perhaps even days (depending on the program’s mass character) of users.
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But if I at least met the specified input masks in the interfaces, I have never seen a simple solution for virtual keyboards. With virtual keyboards, everything is much simpler (in terms of ideas;), but in software implementation, it is perhaps more complicated). It is necessary to simply select gray ones, make those keys that are responsible for entering invalid characters inaccessible for pressing. Why is this not in any interface, for example, on a PDA? Unknown :(.
I summarize: when creating data entry fields, one should remember not only about the verification of the entered data, but also about facilitating the input mechanism itself.
A new idea is only that on virtual keyboards it can be done visually.
Experienced geeks know the main cases by heart and do not come across. And computer novices often use such symbols, and get errors, which, by the way, are not always informative enough to understand what's the matter. But in any case, everybody ever opens a new program or website, where new, non-standard situations are possible.
It is quite logical not to let the user enter invalid characters that are specific to such fields. Quietly squeak on an invalid character and display a hint which characters you can use. A very simple, logical approach to the usability of interfaces, but for some reason rarely, when it can be seen in our reality. Most often this happens only when filling in strictly specified fields, for example, when entering phone numbers. Letters usually do not allow to enter there (about minus signs, plus there is a separate story in such masks;). Recalling my programmer past, I guess why this happens, the programmers just use the standard components already embedded in the development environment to set such fields. And when there is no standard component, no one will take care of user convenience.
The situation is deplorable, I hope that the developers who read this text will take note and pay attention to the problem. A programmer, having spent 10 minutes on setting an input mask, will save hours, and perhaps even days (depending on the program’s mass character) of users.
')
But if I at least met the specified input masks in the interfaces, I have never seen a simple solution for virtual keyboards. With virtual keyboards, everything is much simpler (in terms of ideas;), but in software implementation, it is perhaps more complicated). It is necessary to simply select gray ones, make those keys that are responsible for entering invalid characters inaccessible for pressing. Why is this not in any interface, for example, on a PDA? Unknown :(.
I summarize: when creating data entry fields, one should remember not only about the verification of the entered data, but also about facilitating the input mechanism itself.
A new idea is only that on virtual keyboards it can be done visually.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/21084/
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