The lastminute WTF
Ok, this is not serious, it contains high quantities of fine web developer fun. Please do not read it if you don't feel that geekly ironic...
I was trying to update my e-mail address at lastminute when I was treated to a series of consecutive WTF, each one being even more astounding than the previous one. And I wanted to share it with you so we all can enjoy this product of engineering.
As web developer, I expected to find an option for logging in first, and then changing my account details. But not, you choose first "Your account" and then you click on "Manage your personal and site details". Yeah it looks good (but weird). Anyway, when I click on the second link I get to a page like this:
Please note that I had to manually add the input box for current email address, since it wasn't added by the system. Seems they like us to practise the trendy Do-It-Yourself hobby.
The problem is that I can't paint input boxes in the browser, so when I entered my new email addresses, the system gave me this error:
I must confess that I was kind of waiting for this error to appear. It's like, you know, when you want to delete something in Windows and it asks you each time "Are you sure you want to send the file to the recycle bin?".
So I had the hope that the missing input field would appear now, magicly! because they would fix their error of not showing my input field from the beginning. But there's more fun to come!
I tried going back to the first screen and chose the option for checking my Purchase History, as I thought: that one is asking me for my password, so maybe once I check my Purchase History, it will show me an input field because I will be logged in. So I entered my email and password, and...
Tadaaaaaaa!
The best error message I've seen in a long time!
Unsupported keysize or algorithm parameters.Come in, I'm sure you are counting the minutes till you can use it in your own application. You're secretly desiring to find a good place to trigger this error. Maybe when there are not enough products in stock? When an operation has completed successfully? Just about completing transfers in a banking application? That one looks like a cool new home for this error. Let's read it again:
Unsupported keysize or algorithm parameters.It's so delicious, so obscure for us the illiterate users, and I'm sure the IT guys know very well what it means. When a user fills in a support ticket with the subject "I'm getting an unsupported keysize or algorithm parameters", they have good laughs. HAH! he's getting The Error! He's fucked! HA! HAHA! =))
But let's not get distracted with this tremendous load of fun. I forgot to tell that the pink circle with an exclamation mark actually is BLINKING. So that it actually shows like this:
That looks quite cool but I think it would have improved a lot if everything had been blinking. So as I saw that there was no way of changing my email from there I just thought: let's go back to the form with the missing input field and let's find out what's going on there.Unsupported keysize or algorithm parameters
There's an embedded javascript in the very page, being triggered when the form is submitted. Also, as I guessed, the input for my current email address it's in the form, but it is hidden, as the web developer toolbar's "Forms - Display form details" function (and a view to the page's source) will quickly demonstrate:
There are also a couple of "textfeild" which look very funny too. Extremely funny, indeed!
But again, let's not get distracted with the fun! We can directly input the value of the current login (i.e. my current email address), now that Firefox shows us the hidden fields.
That's cool! With filling this and my new desired e-mail address, I just get to this confirmation page:
So it looks like I changed it! Maybe not, because I didn't fill in all the fields. When I get the next e-mail with stupid travel offers, I'll tell you. Actually this serves for another purpose, apart of giving tons of fun, which is to remind everybody that javascript validations are baaaad. As you see, they are easy to forge and break even more easily.
And now let's find a place for The Error!!