Consolidated feedback from Hacker News

I've taken all of the comments from the original post, grouped them, sorted them based on popularity (and what I think is most interesting), and consolidated them below:

Give advice on the "trunk" trick

"One 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."

"Same 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."

"Same with Japan...If you want to call 080 7653 9523 you dial 011 81 80 7653 9523"

Auto-complete

"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."

"Allow a user to specify a country's name by its common abbreviation. For example, UAE for United Arab Emirates."

"Also: trim whitespace. I typed in UK, hit space to remove Ukraine as a match, and it said no matches for "UK "."

"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."

"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."

"I like the combobox usage as opposed to a dropdown."

"Although it says 'country' I can see a lot of people typing in cities. Any way to resolve those as well?"

Enter the whole number and show everything you need to call

"Ideally 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."

Default cursor to the first text area

"You should make the cursor snap to the first text box upon loading of the page"

"Personally, 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."

"I tend to like it. So you'd better do an A/B-test before committing either way."

"I agree, it's much preferable than to tabbing to it (since most sites don't use tabindexes)."

"You can focus the text box without moving the person's cursor. That's a much better approach imho."

"Sure. Search for "Windows.Forms.Cursor.Position"

Dial this number from Skype

"Additionally, wouldn’t it make sense to add some "dial this number now with Skype" or some related service?"

Use geo-ip lookup to determine where they are, autopopulate the location

"You 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"

"And use cookies so that the value in the first box is the same as it was last time."

"Is it possible to try and default to the country the person is actually in? That is, look at their IP address?"

Internationalization

"You 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."

"Just 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!""

"You can also check their translation by putting it back into English with an automated translator. (Google has one for example.)"

Colors

"On this Mac laptop, screen at full brightness in daylight, I can hardly see the grey text."

"Bad gray and make the info text disappear when one clicks in the field."

"Your (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."

Show more info then just the country codes

"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."

"Perhaps 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."

"I agree. Of course you can add a link to another single service site of you (or Wikipedia etc), that include that information."

"You 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."

"I'm sure you would've already seen it, but incase if not, try getting in as many features (OR NOT) fromhttp://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/dialing.html"

"Another 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."

Make error page nicer

"Make the error page (select 1 country and click submit) much nicer, ideally inline javascript."

Make it easier to return to the front page

"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?"

Make results inline

"Make the result inline javascript. One page load less."

"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."

"Very nice. How about if the result appeared inline below the "Lookup" button instead of on a new page?"