Hi there,

we recently run a Drupal 6 website under an usability testing session. One of the tasks users were needed to accomplish were adding a comment to a node. The full commenter details fields (name, mail, website, etc.) were enable so user could insert a website address. Most of them failed to insert a valid fully qualified URL and instead used something like www.example.com.

Then on comment submission this message would be returned:
The URL of your homepage is not valid. Remember that it must be fully qualified, i.e. of the form <code>http://example.com/directory</code>.

From a strictly technical point of view this message is pretty perfect. Unfortunately none of the tested user were able to understand what an URL actually is and what fully qualified means. I should say that this message pretty confused our users.

I would suggest using a more easier and less technical language like:
The address of your homepage is not valid. Remember that it must be in the form <code>http://example.com/directory</code>.

Hope this helps,

Fabio Varesano

Comments

yoroy’s picture

Title: [usability] change criptic error message for wron homepage URL to something easier to understand. » Change criptic error message for wrong homepage URL to something easier to understand.
Component: comment.module » user interface text
Issue tags: +Usability

Thank you! Very interested to hear about other issues you might have found during usability testing. If you feel like telling us a bit more, please do so at http://groups.drupal.org/usability

The actual bug is a typical Drupal thing yes, relying too much on technical knowledge of the user instead of handling those things itself (like maybe adding the "http://" part etc…)
Tagging with 'usability' and retitling. Although user interface strings are frozen, a bug is a bug and we should look into fixing it.

fax8’s picture

I wrote a blog post on our findings and solutions at http://www.varesano.net/blog/fabio/usability%20testing%20drupals%20comme...

amc’s picture

Title: Change criptic error message for wrong homepage URL to something easier to understand. » Change cryptic error message for wrong homepage URL to something easier to understand
fax8’s picture

Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)