UX for bitcoin address field

[Stephen Gornick]

The user experience for pasting to the bitcoin address input field in a web form varies widely across Bitcoin's growing presence on exchanges, merchant sites,  blogs, etc.

Is it appropriate to massage the value that was input?  e.g., to strip out leading blank space character, or a trailing linefeed, etc?

Or are there any other tips regarding the UX for this field?

[Stephen Gornick]

Here's a specific example of why I ask this:
  MtGox withdrawal issues
  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6511.msg95327#msg95327

[theymos]

Trimming invalid characters is a good idea. The chance that you make a valid address from nothing is nearly 0 -- if you get a valid address, the user pasted one.

I've seen many sites assume that Bitcoin addresses must be 33 or 34 characters long, but they can actually be 25-43 characters in length.

All sites should verify address checksums. I don't like the idea of asking Bitcoin over RPC for every address, though: there's code for checking yourself in several languages.

[ByteCoin]

I've seen many sites assume that Bitcoin addresses must be 33 or 34 characters long, but they can actually be 25-43 characters in length.

Please provide either examples or at least a plausible argument for the existence of valid addresses shorter than 27 characters or longer than 34 characters. I've corrected you on this before http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1019.msg12683#msg12683

ByteCoin

[theymos]

lease provide either examples or at least a plausible argument for the existence of valid addresses shorter than 27 characters or longer than 34 characters. I've corrected you on this before http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1019.msg12683#msg12683

26 characters:
11111111111111111111BZbvjr

I did wrongly remember the upper limit, though. It is 34 characters. I must have flipped the digits in my head.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Another thing - slightly offtopic: The remnants from IP transfers confuse a lot of people, they need to be removed ASAP.