UK government showing they are modern?
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Behold the advice page of the new UK Department of Work and Pensions online claims system. Note that this is brand new, only been available a couple of months.
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That's quite... special.
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@the new UK Department of Work and Pensions online claims system said:
The service does not work properly with Macs or other Unix-based systems even though you may be able to input information.
You are likely to have problems if you use Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Windows Vista or a smartphone. Clearing temporary internet files may help but you may wish to claim in another way.
There is also a high risk that if you use browsers not listed below, including Chrome, Safari or Firefox, the service will not display all the questions you need to answer. This is likely to prevent you from successfully completing or submitting the form. You may wish to claim in another way.
It's worse seeing that they understand the issue, and have responded to reports. "even though you may be able to input information", "Clearing temporary internet files may help but you may wish to claim in another way", "high risk that... the service will not display all the questions you need to answer... You may wish to claim in another way".
Clearly whoever is behind this page understands that the system sucks, but is unable (likely too under-staffed) to correct the problem.
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Also note that this system cost £2.4 billion
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Just found a creation date in the code:
<meta name="DC.date.created" scheme="W3CDTF" content="2006-03-13" />
So yeah, modern for seven and a half years ago....
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Except it only went live a couple of months ago. And it references operating systems that weren't available at that time. So even if it was started seven and a half years ago, even if it had been made available seven and a half years ago, that's no excuse for releasing it without updating it to work with the technology around now.Or do you think that Internet Explorer 10 was around in 2006?
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Makes perfect sense to me. We're talking about pensioners, and we all know how they hold on to things of the past ("the good old days") like Windows 98.
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It is not only pensioners, it is for all Social Security claimants, including those working on low pay who need Housing Benefit in order to pay their rent. The idea apparently is that soon everyone who claims social security will HAVE to do it online.
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Apart of the message itself, just imagine the amount of WTFs that code has to have to not being able to work on different browsers. I mean, there must be ActiveX somewhere and with that premise, you know that you'll find some life sucking stuff in there.
Funny thing is that MS seems to keep hitting the nail of WTF by moving all their "generated by .Net" code to JavaScript. Today I've had to debug a problem with this kind of crap raising this: Sys.WebForms.RequestManagerTimeoutException.
BTW, if anyone knows why this shit is happening only in Win7 with IE8 and IE9 (not with XP nor with Win8) with code generated by .Net, I'll give you a cookie.
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Representative line: "The service was designed to work with the following operating systems and browsers. Many of these are no longer available."
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I'll pick my top three:
#3: Write me a pencil
Nothing says competent web design like using Javascript to write out otherwise static HTML elements:
@\/\/\/\/\/ said:
<script type="text/javascript"> // This writes the link to a CSS file which displays the launch button and related content. document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" href="css\/eservice_showlaunch.css" type="text\/css" \/>'); </script>
#2 Pressing Issue
Just about every link is wired to open a popup on click. But they were very considerate and provided keyboard navigation. So if you press enter, it also opens the link. Of course, they accomplish that by wiring up the onkeypresed event. So if you try to TAB past a link-- BAM open!
#1 NoScript-ish
Presented without comment. See if you can spot it. It's very subtle.
@'No'Script said:
<noscript> Your browser does not have <a href="help/help_javascript.asp" target="popuphelp" <font size="18">onclick</font>="wopen('help/help_javascript.asp', 400, 460); return false;" onkeypress="wopen('help/help_javascript.asp', 400, 460); return false;" title ="JavaScript info (launches new window)">JavaScript</a> enabled.
</noscript>Honourable mention: Does anyone know a non-spam site where I can download Netscape 7.2?
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Makes perfect sense if your aim is to pay out less in benefits... And I cant think of many better heuristics for selecting who should receive benefits than age of operating system.
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@eViLegion said:
Makes perfect sense if your aim is to pay out less in benefits... And I cant think of many better heuristics for selecting who should receive benefits than age of operating system.
Make the site only work with a 1Gb connection. That'll ensure that only “deserving” people can get benefits.
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This is not as big a WTF by itself as you may be inclined to believe. After all, reusing existing platforms and in-house talent is always recommendable.
Remember, all the internal tools and intranet sites of the UK government are made for IE5&6. So of course their immediately available talent pool is a bit specialized too.
I wish I had a link for this, but there was a bit of news about some ministry in UK complaining about MS dropping support for IE5&6 completely a few years ago.
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@ubersoldat said:
BTW, if anyone knows why this shit is happening only in Win7 with IE8 and IE9 (not with XP nor with Win8) with code generated by .Net, I'll give you a cookie.
Cookies
Your browser must have cookies enabled. This service uses session cookies to improve your experience of the service. Session cookies do not contain any personal information about you and they are deleted when you leave the site.
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@mikeTheLiar said:
Your browser must have cookies enabled. This service uses session cookies to improve your experience of the service. Session cookies do not contain any personal information about you and they are deleted when you leave the site.
I love how they say you have to have Javascript enabled for the site to function, when all what javascript is used for is improving the experience (text highlighting, client-side validation, etc).
But they say cookies need to be enabled to improve your experience, when cookies must be enabled for the fucking site to even work (persistant user information across page views).
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@Lorne Kates said:
Honourable mention: Does anyone know a non-spam site where I can download Netscape 7.2?
Assuming you want the English version, you're welcome!
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@Lorne Kates said:
Honourable mention: Does anyone know a non-spam site where I can download Netscape 7.2?
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And here I was thinking that
Centrelink'sThe Department of Human Services' Lotus Notes based system which occasionally randomly decides that clicking things will do nothing was bad...
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@ubersoldat said:
Apart of the message itself, just imagine the amount of WTFs that code has to have to not being able to work on different browsers. I mean, there must be ActiveX somewhere and with that premise, you know that you'll find some life sucking stuff in there.
If they were using ActiveX wouldn't you be limited to only using IE? Do the various Netscape/Mozilla browsers they reccomend work with ActiveX? I didn't think they did.
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There used to be some sort of ActiveX addon for Firefox. I don't think it's maintained anymore. And then there was that addon that would let you embed IE in a Firefox tab because...you can I guess. And at that point are you really using Firefox anymore?
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@stinerman said:
There used to be some sort of ActiveX addon for Firefox. I don't think it's maintained anymore. And then there was that addon that would let you embed IE in a Firefox tab because...you can I guess. And at that point are you really using Firefox anymore?
Because Microsoft didn't think Tabs were a good idea until the late 2000's.
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@Malenfant said:
Behold the advice page of the new UK Department of Work and Pensions online claims system. Note that this is brand new, only been available a couple of months.
Just for fun, I decided to give the site a try. Eventually I had to quit because I don't have a National Insurance Number, but, I was able to answer questions and navigate through several pages without any problem, using Firefox 21. It would appear that their website isn't as broken as they think it is, which may be TRWTF.
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" It is not only pensioners, it is for all Social Security claimants, including those working on low pay who need Housing Benefit in order to pay their rent. The idea apparently is that soon everyone who claims social security will HAVE to do it online. "
Aye, bear in mind, they're closing most of the libraries where you could apply online if you didn't have a 'pute. And if you can't you have to 'phone a pay for line. I know one person who was on hold for over 10 minutes and ran out of credit (I'd put a tenner on her 'phone for her that day) just waiting to connect. Another couple I know had no library or benefit office within 10 miles - the nearest library and office to where they lived are now being closed.
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@Scumspawn said:
" It is not only pensioners, it is for all Social Security claimants, including those working on low pay who need Housing Benefit in order to pay their rent. The idea apparently is that soon everyone who claims social security will HAVE to do it online. "
Aye, bear in mind, they're closing most of the libraries where you could apply online if you didn't have a 'pute. And if you can't you have to 'phone a pay for line. I know one person who was on hold for over 10 minutes and ran out of credit (I'd put a tenner on her 'phone for her that day) just waiting to connect. Another couple I know had no library or benefit office within 10 miles - the nearest library and office to where they lived are now being closed.
That makes sense to me. Anything that isn't sustainable won't be sustained. Though the manner in which it folds up is not set in stone.
