5 ms·
Ask HN: Review my new single service website
http://www.simplecountrycodes.com/
The idea is to offer a completely painless way to find the country codes you need when dialing internationally.
What I'm looking for is ideas to make the process potentially simpler, easier to use, or more useful. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
- lennysan 17y agoOne thing I'm finding that I didn't plan for is that I'm getting a lot of visitors from outside the US. Any advice on internationalizing the site?
- eru 17y agoJust put up a some simple text: "If you'd like to help translate this site into your language, please feel free to drop me a line at [email]. Thank you!"
- lennysan 17y agoI like it! Crowdsource it. I'd probably want to have at least two people do it independently per country to make sure they aren't saying naughty things.
- eru 17y agoYou can also check their translation by putting it back into English with an automated translator. (Google has one for example.)
- RossM 17y agoYou don't seem to have a lot of content actually on the site. My suggestion would be to build a phrase table for country names, and set a cookie after the user has entered their home country for use later on.
- lennysan 17y agoAgreed.
- pclark 17y agoYou should make the cursor snap to the first text box upon loading of the page Can you make it not autocomplete text in the text field? Eg, type UK and it fills in UKraine ... nicer if it only auto completes when I click a result / select with arrows and press enter/tab. Make the error page (select 1 country and click submit) much nicer, ideally inline javascript. I'd make the results auto generate above the text fields, this way I can easily enter another two countries to calculate simply by pressing tab a few times. It's also too hard to return back to the home page (assuming you don't do the above suggestion) -- how about a little image at the end of the sentence which when clicked takes you back to the homepage? thats all I can think of right now - cool app!
- ahlatimer 17y agoPersonally, I hate it when my cursor snaps to the first open text box. Maybe I'm the only one annoyed by it, but I'd suggest against it.
- eru 17y agoI tend to like it. So you'd better do an A/B-test before committing either way.
- RossM 17y agoI agree, it's much preferable than to tabbing to it (since most sites don't use tabindexes).
- trevelyan 17y agoYou can focus the text box without moving the person's cursor. That's a much better approach imho.
- eru 17y agoI'd thought that was what was meant originally. But --- so websites can not only move focus around but also the (mouse) cursor?
- JeremyChase 17y agoYou could also think about using geolocation to pre-populate the first box. They have a free database and API that would work for this application: http://www.maxmind.com/app/support http://www.maxmind.com/app/support
- cabalamat 17y agoAnd use cookies so that the value in the first box is the same as it was last time. While you're at it, why not expand the site so it contains more information about countries, e.g. include internet country codes. Include currencies for the from and to countries and currency conversions.
- lennysan 17y agoLike the idea of keeping the previous values, though I'll try to see if I can do this without cookies. In regards to the second idea, I'm trying to keep the site as simple as possible, and adding anything else will only hurt (imho).
- eru 17y agoI agree. Of course you can add a link to another single service site of you (or Wikipedia etc), that include that information.
- Jakob 17y agoOne important point is missing: If I want to phone to Germany, I have to omit the first zero of the area code. Phoning to Italy I mustn’t omit it. Make the result inline javascript. One page load less. Additionally, wouldn’t it make sense to add some "dial this number now with Skype" or some related service? Good service.
- jgrahamc 17y agoIdeally there'd be a third box where I can enter the number I'm trying to call and the service would tell me exactly what to dial.
- lennysan 17y agoLove the idea. That's Phase III :)
- sounddust 17y agoSame thing with France; you have to omit the first zero. Furthermore, there really isn't an "area code". You should just say to omit the first zero of the number.
- staunch 17y agoSame with Japan... If you want to call 080 7653 9523 you dial 011 81 80 7653 9523
- lennysan 17y agoGreat feedback.
- jlees 17y agoOn this Mac laptop, screen at full brightness in daylight, I can hardly see the grey text. Although it says 'country' I can see a lot of people typing in cities. Any way to resolve those as well? Also: trim whitespace. I typed in UK, hit space to remove Ukraine as a match, and it said no matches for "UK ".
- lennysan 17y agoGood point. Will think about this one.
- teej 17y agoClickable link: http://www.simplecountrycodes.com/ http://www.simplecountrycodes.com/
- mshafrir 17y agoAllow a user to specify a country's name by its common abbreviation. For example, UAE for United Arab Emirates.
- lennysan 17y agoAny ideas where I could find all of the common abbreviations?
- chanux 17y agoSimple enough!
- amjith 17y agoYou can take it one step further and add the area codes to your database. So I can choose to call munich from US, and it'll autofill the area code and the country code.
- lennysan 17y agoI'm doing my best to avoid that (for now) :) But I agree, could be really useful.
- sachmanb 17y agoLike it, bookmarked it. You could try and make it simpler (be careful....) but it does exactly what it's supposed to really well. I like the combobox usage as opposed to a dropdown.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- lennysan 17y agoThanks! Any ideas how to make it simpler?
- tracy 17y agoBad gray and make the info text disappear when one clicks in the field.
- lennysan 17y agoNot sure what you mean, but I presume the gray auto-replaced text isn't great?
- resdirector 17y agoPerhaps include current time in the from-country and to-country? Perhaps, also let the user set when they plan to call, e.g., 5pm to-country time, and it gives the from-country time...and vice versa.
- lennysan 17y agoI really like the idea of showing the country times. I've been looking into ways to do this, but it isn't trivial. I will definitely keep keep thinking about this. I personally would find it really useful.
- resdirector 17y agoIs it getting-the-data which isn't trivial? You can write a crawler for wikipedia. Each country has their time zones in their entry (nicely formatted which makes it easy for parser to find), with daylight saving information too. Many countries, are, of course spanned across a few time zones, but that shouldn't matter. The root page for your crawler could be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population, for instance.
- mattmcknight 17y agoAre single service websites the same as single serving websites?
- lennysan 17y agoNever differentiated the two myself
- tezza 17y agoHi there lennysan. Nice idea. My (minor) comment is: Work on the keystrokes when the type ahead box appears. For instance GR selects Greece ... Great Britain. In this mode the UP arrow should select Great Britain. Currently it is not bound. Just my usability 2p.
- lennysan 17y agoAwesome tip, will investigate.
- tezza 17y agoAnother comment. Looking at Great Britain -> Australia, you say :: ... 00 + 61 + area code + phone number There are only 7 such area codes. These correspond to an Australian State. Probably it would be worth listing some _example_ phone numbers in each State, with a label to each State. Often I have a local person give the phone number in an email, presuming I'm in the same State. ---- e.g Victoria :: 00 + 61 + 3 + 9651 8911 (Vic Parliament) New South Wales :: 00 + 61 + 2 + 9230 2111 (NSW parliament)
- lennysan 17y agoTrying my best to stay away from all that manutia for now, at least until I can justify the amount of work necessary to do that. But agreed, could be really useuful.
- psranga 17y agoVery nice. How about if the result appeared inline below the "Lookup" button instead of on a new page?
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y agoCouldn't you just call directory assistance? Usually free the first few usages and most people aren't calling different countries enough that they won't remember the codes for the most recently called ones.
- resdirector 17y agoIs it possible to try and default to the country the person is actually in? That is, look at their IP address?
- areaMan 17y agoYour (barely visible) footer "We hope all of the data here is accurate, but if you find that it is not please send comments/suggestions/bugs to @countrycodes." what's the email ID again? I'm sure you would've already seen it, but incase if not, try getting in as many features (OR NOT) from http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/dialing.html http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/dialing.html It already supports abbreviations like USA and UK, but not UAE. Also auto-completion should come in only if I press the arrow or down keys. If I enter UK, it should not automatically assume UKraine.