Xarg blog Archive

In the "i18n can go horribly wrong" box goes the touristonline.dk credit card validation failure handling. When you put in the wrong expiry for your credit card you get switched to danish in the error handling code. Even worse is that since it is cookie maintained you can't do url surgery to switch back to english. Even worse than that, it is carrying around your booking information tied to your session so when you go back to the main screen to get back to english and go through the whole sequence from scratch it remembers the previous booking sans credit card details and treats the new booking as being in addition to the first booking. Oddly enough, the final confirm screen switches back to Danish as well so it's hard to tell exactly what is going on. I only figured out that I was booking a second room since it asked for the name of the second guest, and then I noticed the total (in DKK) was too high. There does not seem to be any way to fix it other than to exit your browser and start again...

I guess its bad session management and poor code, but one thing is for sure, it's hard to imagine something more detrimental to the user expereince than having to navigate forms in a language you do not understand, and being compelled to do so since you are not entirely sure if your credit card has been charged or not.

Of course the happy ending is that I finally managed to book just one room and will be going to the dotLRN seminar/OpenACS Social in Copenhagen. It should be fun.