Auto-spacing input field text

On a recent project, a set of wireframes landed on my desk which contained some “interesting” ideas, particularly when it came to form fields. One that really stood out was having a credit card number auto-space as the user types it into a single input box. This of course would depend completely on what type of card they are entering, as different cards have different layouts. American Express for example have a [4, 6, 5] layout, where as Visa use a [4, 4, 4, 4] number layout.

Thankfully this functionality was eventually removed from the UI specifications after concerns from myself and others were raised. Just to make this perfectly clear; I think this is a bad idea, and here is why:

  • Users are very wary when it comes entering their credit card details. Spaces magically appearing in their credit card number could freak a few of them out.
  • Most e-commerce website I’ve ever used ask for the credit card number as one long string of numbers with no spaces. Auto-spacing goes against this convention, so a user may actually go back and try to remove the spaces (I know I would).
  • Validation scripts for credit card numbers usually ask for the input to have no spaces, or will remove any spaces on submit.
  • If you do want to space out the credit card number, why not use different input boxes for each set of numbers? It looks cleaner and is simpler to implement. Just have your JavaScript automatically jump between boxes as the user types.

Even though this functionality was removed, I decided to build a prototype of it in action because… well because I can and I was bored. :) Please, (please!), whatever you do don’t use this code in production. I created it as an experiment and should be treated that way. It’s very simple to get around the auto-spacing and then all hell breaks loose! (not really, but it is easy to break).

The spacing is implemented by counting the length of the string inside the input field, but you could also monitor the current position of the cursor. Anyone wishing to do this see this excellent set of answers on Stackoverflow.

You can see the prototype here. Remember, don’t use it. It’s not big and it’s not clever :)

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