A Case of the Missing Required Field that Must Not Have Been Required
The Tell-a-Friend feature on the Dole Salad Super Slider contest offers a single field: friend’s e-mail address:
This works because the screen displays after you’ve entered your e-mail address and name as part of your contest entry. But what happens if you click Submit before you enter a friend’s e-mail address?
The error message mentions a friend’s first name field which is not present on the form.
The application sends the message when you enter an e-mail address, so the friend’s first name field is not actually required.
I’ll leave it to your imagination whether this represents recycled code, a late-breaking design change, or an assumption on the part of developer.
What I can tell you is that someone did not test this application thoroughly.
Remember, each of these applications is its own entity, and if you’ve done the same thing a million times before for other clients, you need to treat each application as though the others did not come before them. Your assumptions and oversights might be more glaring and showstopping than this simple problem.
