STORY
Oregon Flag State Form Blunder
Oregon Flag State Form Blunder
- A humorous anecdote about a poorly designed web form that split Oregon into two separate states.
The Web Form
- While filling out an online registration form, I scrolled to the state of residence selection.
- Instead of a single entry for Oregon, the dropdown list contained two options: "Oregon (front)" and "Oregon (back)".
- Inspecting the page source code revealed they had two entirely different ID numbers in the form element via View Source.
The Reason
- Oregon is the only state in the United States to have a double-sided state flag (featuring the state seal on the front and a beaver on the back).
- The developers had apparently scraped a list of state flags to build their state dropdown list, not realizing it would split Oregon into two.
- I ended up selecting "Oregon (front)" because I live west of the Cascade Mountains, which neatly divides the state.
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.