Bad website design



  • I have just applied on-line for a flat with Chester and District Housing Trust (Website: www.chesterhomechoice.org). I lost count of the number of times I said WTF while filling in this form, so I thought I would share it with you guys for your amusement.



  • Public service: [url=http://www.cdht.org/haf/]the form[/url].



  • I like that they differentiate between a male and a female "fiance", but they don't manage to spell the female one correctly (it's "fiancee"). And they include father-, mother-, and brother-in-law, but not sister-in-law, for possible relations.

    I also find it fascinating that you can have lived at your current residence since 100 years into the future, or that you can have a baby that's due 100 years in the past.

    davidh



  • But what if I have more than 20 people moving with me?



  • @Xanthus179 said:

    But what if I have more than 20 people moving with me?

    Then you probably live in Salt Lake City, not Chester (or district).

     



  • WTF?

    "Please select MAIN APPLICANT from the list of options [Required]"

    and I love it how all the date selections offer the exact same dates. . .Yeah, I moved into my current house on the 1st January 2109... 

    oh, and I'm a male who is pregnant with a baby due 100 years from now. 

     

    Web designers are getting more idle every day.



  • And dialog boxes poping up for error messages... How '90's.

    In my browser (IE7), the banner on the top of the page is 1/2 obscured ( I'm guessing on the actual fraction!).



  • Not only that, it also contacts the server at port 7779. It had me say "What" out loud, almost followed by the other two infamous words. 



  •  Now it says

    "Service unavailable"

    both on the form and the home page.

     

    Who did this? Naughty WTFers! Play nicely or you'll get sent home without any supper!



  • Probably got overloaded when 10 of us tried to access it at once ;-)

    It's back now, and, looking at the source, I see these lines:

    <script src="/projector/PopupWindow.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="/projector/AnchorPosition.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="/projector/common.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

     

    However, none of them appear to exist - they just take me a Demon 404 page...

    Secondly, I see a nice javascript script:

     

    		<script type="text/javascript"><!--
    /**
    ** Javascript popup window routine
    **/
    var lovwin = new PopupWindow();
    lovwin.setSize(400, 400);
    //lovwin.autoHide();
    lovwin.setUrl("lov");

    // -->
    		</script>
     

     



  •  Now has the helpful error message

     

    I'm sorry. There appears to be a problem with our system at present.

    Please return later, or contact the following:

     



  • @psiphiorg said:

    I like that they differentiate between a male and a female "fiance", but they don't manage to spell the female one correctly (it's "fiancee"). And they include father-, mother-, and brother-in-law, but not sister-in-law, for possible relations.

    That's unfortunate - my sister-in-law is the only one I'd consider for possible relations. Now my brother doesn't talk to me.



  • Please select the option which best describes your ethnic origin: [color=red]Required[/color]

    [color=blue]British
    Irish
    White and Black Caribbean
    White and Black African
    White and Asian
    Indian
    Pakistani
    Bangladeshi
    Caribbean
    African
    Chinese
    Gypsy/Traveller
    Other
    Refused[/color]

    I'm Polish-German, you insensitive clod!



  •  Ah, so your "Other" then :-)



  • @AlpineR said:

    Please select the option which best describes your ethnic origin: Required

    British
    Irish
    White and Black Caribbean
    White and Black African
    White and Asian
    Indian
    Pakistani
    Bangladeshi
    Caribbean
    African
    Chinese
    Gypsy/Traveller
    Other
    Refused


    I'm Polish-German, you insensitive clod!

     

    Yeah I always laugh at the US Census form, it's worse.  They have like 4-5 different Asian (chinese asain, pacific asain, ect..), they have Alaskan Eskimo, north american indian, 4 different types of hispanics, all kinds of other races and then... White.  They just sum up every single nationality that has fair skin into White after going through several different versions of Asian and others.  

    They should just have Black, Brown, Yellow, Tan and White. 



  • @AlpineR said:

    Please select the option which best describes your ethnic origin: Required

    British
    Irish
    White and Black Caribbean
    White and Black African
    White and Asian
    Indian
    Pakistani
    Bangladeshi
    Caribbean
    African
    Chinese
    Gypsy/Traveller
    Other
    Refused


    I'm Polish-German, you insensitive clod!

     

    Yeah, refused rocks. Morrisey will be happy.

     

    "Please select MAIN APPLICANT from the list of options" is also brilliant.

    i'm Mr "a g" (1 char name, 1 char last name), Female, born on Feb 31.  

     

    Northgate Projector, anyone? 

    <meta name="Generator" content="Northgate Projector, version 1.2 (5268)" />
     


  • @Xelort said:

    i'm Mr "a g" (1 char name, 1 char last name), Female, born on Feb 31.  

    It will not allow me to select Feb 31 unless I have Javascript disabled, it changes it back to Feb 28. Even checks for years which have 29 days in Feb too. Suprising considering the amount of other WTFs. Since they can do that with JS, I would have thought automatic selection of Male/Female through Mr/Mrs would be obvious.


  • @amischiefr said:

    They should just have Black, Brown, Yellow, Tan and White.

    What, no Green?



  • @Mole said:

    Since they can do that with JS, I would have thought automatic selection of Male/Female through Mr/Mrs would be obvious.

    A choice of "Dr." would be nice too.  I didn't spend five years in evil graduate school for nothing! Maybe a choice of "Sir", "Princess", and "Jedi Master" too.



  • @Spectre said:

    What, no Green?
     

    How about an RGB code. If they wanna dig deeper into where your ancestors came from, they could add a tuple of latitude-longitude pairs. 



  • @TGV said:

    It had me say "What" out loud, almost followed by the other two infamous words.

    "What Than Failure"?

    davidh



  •  I called in to their office today, to check how my application is going, as I haven't heard from them. I commented on how poorly designed/coded the form is, and the lady replied 'Yes, it is slow isn't it?'. I think that's the least of their worries regarding the site.



  • @Malenfant said:

     I called in to their office today, to check how my application is going, as I haven't heard from them. I commented on how poorly designed/coded the form is, and the lady replied 'Yes, it is slow isn't it?'. I think that's the least of their worries regarding the site.

    I bet it's slow because there's a web designer getting paid web-designer rates who is copying the valid-looking applications off the web system into the actual back-end system and he only does this once a week so it takes a week for the applications to reach the person in the office.  He only does it once a week because their budget can only afford to pay for one day a week "web support."


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Qwerty said:

    @Malenfant said:

     I called in to their office today, to check how my application is going, as I haven't heard from them. I commented on how poorly designed/coded the form is, and the lady replied 'Yes, it is slow isn't it?'. I think that's the least of their worries regarding the site.

    I bet it's slow because there's a web designer getting paid web-designer rates who is copying the valid-looking applications off the web system into the actual back-end system and he only does this once a week so it takes a week for the applications to reach the person in the office.  He only does it once a week because their budget can only afford to pay for one day a week "web support."

    I parsed that as the application itself being slow, not the development of the site.


  • Sorry for the necropost, but I've just started to use a related website to locate a house.

     This one lets you skip the application process (They're actually using PAPER!) but it does let you view the properties you're able to apply for... in a way.

    Just a sample of the source code for a flat's page:

    http://www.nottinghamhomelink.org.uk/projector/page/prop-info?pro_refno=398925

    <FONT size=-1><tr class="not-empty" id="row9">
                          <td class="details">Heating</td>
                          <td class="details-info">Full Electric District Heating</td>    
                      </tr>   
                      <tr class="empty" id="row10">
                          <td class="details"></td>
                          <td class="details-info"></td>                                                      
                      </tr>                 
                      <tr class="not-empty" id="row11">
                          <td class="details">Pets?</td>
                          <td class="details-info">No Pets</td>    
                      </tr>   
                      <tr class="not-empty" id="row12">
                          <td class="details">Back Garden</td>
                          <td class="details-info">Medium</td>
                      </tr>    
                      <tr class="empty" id="row13">
                          <td class="details">Parking</td>
                          <td class="details-info"></td>    
                      </tr>   
                      <tr class="not-empty" id="row14">
                          <td class="details">Void Reference Number</td>
                          <td class="details-info">59949</td>                                                      
                      </tr>   </FONT> 
     

    There's 180 of these rows, and more of the same to display some icons at the top of the page...



  • The link you posted must depend on a session id or something, as it fails quite spectacularly on my PC:

    Unexpected Error

    My word! Something went wrong!

    Better start again.

    org.mozilla.javascript.EvaluatorException: syntax error (

     

    Ok, so the error page has errors itself. Sweet. A view source says this:

    org.mozilla.javascript.EvaluatorException: syntax error (<script id pages1li-suppress-script>#1)org.mozilla.javascript.EvaluatorException: syntax error (<script id pages1li-suppress-script>#1)

    Whats that script doing there? 

     

    Ah well, lets start again:

     

     

    Page id 'null' was not found.

     

    Oops!

    WTF? The error page is 459KB !



  • Strange, it seems to work for me... Even on a different computer. They are both running IE6, though.


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