I'm beginning to get fed up with web designers that put United Kingdom right towards the bottom of a pull-down menu selector when filling in feedback forms (usually to download software, or during an online purchase), but only keep the United States as the FIRST option (as a shortcut) in that same menu. Even poor old Canadians have to keep scrolling down to get to their country (admittedly it's not too far to scroll, but scroll they must do..)

It's not all bad news, though. Some developers have kindly put the United Kingdom as a shortcut alongside the United States, and some have even gone so far as to put Canada and then the most big European countries (France, Germany, Netherlands, etc) to boot, but all too often it's just the US that gets the easy life.

I'm also a tad annoyed that some companies and organisations put the UK down as Great Britain (which is merely a synonym) which makes it that bit more frustrating when scrolling down to look for United Kingdom only to have to scroll all the way back up to countries beginning with G.

M.

I know what you mean, says another UK user.

However, are UK web designers any less to blame here? How many do things any different? How many have taken the time to even think about this? How many actually take the time to think about the end user at all?

And that last point is a serious one...

IMHO it's a bad thing to do this. Same goes for putting UK and/or Canada at the top. Such a list should *always* be alphabetical. And you don't have to scroll btw, you can just type in the letter 'u' to get there.

Off-topic, I know - but what really gets on my tits is typing 'center' and 'color' in CSS/HTML

It's all marketing....it's a matter of keeping a majority of your customers happy. If a product is marketed primarily in one or two countries, I'm not surprised that it is given "special" treatment (such as in drop down lists and such).

Yeah, you're right...it's frustrating. But in the big picture, I think it's a battle that most people don't think is worth fighting.

You can do clever things - don't ask me how, but the advertisers do it, of detecting where the country a visitor to a site is based and you could therefore change the order of the list so that the visitor's country came first. (I bet someone on the PHP section would know how)

However I am happy just pressing the u key three or four times to get the right country - Ok occaisionally I'm Ukranian - but live a little.

Interesting Afghanistan gets a lot more hits being first - I suspect this will worry someone in the White House. :lol: