Man, I could write about nothing but poorly designed web forms with silly, undocumented assumptions…

I’m listing things on ebay and kijiji and I’m trying to list fair, accurate postal information. So, I head over to canadapost.ca and fill in information on the expected size and weight of a package.

Length: 20cm

Width: 25cm

Height: 35cm

Weight: 2.6kg

It’s a tall thing that I’m shipping, so naturally I order the numbers the way they come show on the ruler as I measure the object. Seems perfectly reasonable, and I hit submit. I receive an error that says;

Improperly specified dimensions. Length, width, and height values must represent the longest, second longest and shortest values respectively.

which means, in effect

I know I’m a computer, and sorting numbers is one of those things I do… but it’s not my passion. My passion is making you ape creatures DANCE FOR MY AMUSEMENT

This is an error that shouldn’t occur; the system should take whatever order I enter arbitrary numbers in and DEAL WITH THEM. If there’s an artificial limitation placed on how things should be entered, then these definitions should be listed on the page ahead of time.