Online help chat

Need help? Chat with xxx online. At the bottom of the chat box I see the top of a text entry box. After typing in my message I am stymied. How to send it? Evidently there has to be a send button but it must be below the bottom of the screen. There are no scroll bars to bring it into view.

I experienced this recently with PlusNet and with Vodaphone. I should explain that I have an Advent Notebook with Firefox for browsing the sites that Netsurf cannot access, with a screen resolution no smaller than the average for a notebook. Why should I have to complain about interfaces with such poor accessibility? It seems that the designers for these grand companies have totally overlooked Tim Berners Lee’s ideas and the whole raison d’estre for HTML. Why have a dialog box with a fixed height attribute when it would be so easy to set it as auto in the style file? Unless, that is, you are trying to shut out anybody who does not use some standard graphics mode?

PlusNet tell me that they are considering my complaint. Has anybody else encountered this frustrating nonsense? It is not as if Windows XP lets you change the graphics mode on the fly, even if there were a suitable one available. It is evident that all these companies, despite their boasts of user-friendly interfaces, never actually test them on a wide enough range of platforms.

PlusNet tell me that they are considering my complaint. Has anybody else encountered this frustrating nonsense?

Frequently, but then I’m in IT support and I use a lot of obscure stuff.
Also, working in the NHS, problem #1 is the requirement to use old versions of browser etc because National Applications have a requirement for legacy security holes being open whilst needing to cater for new stuff arriving (from the same source as the crappy old stuff) which requires spangly new features.

Why have a dialog box with a fixed height attribute when it would be so easy to set it as auto in the style file?

Because the asshat “web developer” (and I use that phrase pejoratively) does not understand that some things may look different to that which appears on his fancy “web editor” (I refrain from saying “HTML editor” as I wonder how many of these people even know HTML and/or CSS – I suspect a lot of them choose stuff from drop-down lists and pop-up menus).

PlusNet tell me that they are considering my complaint.

That probably means it has been filed in the bin, where most user feedback goes these days.

Has anybody else encountered this frustrating nonsense?

If you are not a subscriber of Orange France – you will have been saved a lot of nonsense. Actually, their site is slowly improving. It only expects you to have Flash for listening to answering machine messages, which is stupid since you can download them. I wonder if they finally woke up and realised that iThingies don’t do Flash, and the devices that do tend to rank it as a bug-ridden piece of poo.

It is not as if Windows XP lets you change the graphics mode on the fly,

Actually, it can. I can easily swap between 1024×600 (netbook screen native) and 1440×900 (display panel native). Sometimes when I’m using RedSquirrel full-screen, going back to Windows throws me into 800×600 which is a pain as it messes up my backdrop shortcut icons.
Yes – I can change display resolution on the fly. I can even do stupid things like rotate the display 180, though I’m not sure why I’d want to do that, unless I’m watching Patema Inverted and feel like missing the entire point…

It is evident that all these companies, despite their boasts of user-friendly interfaces, never actually test them on a wide enough range of platforms.

There. Fixed that for you. ;-)

My personal pet peeve of websites (I might have mentioned this before) is an ordering site that you place an order and it comes to the address part.
Your zip code is invalid.
So I try the French postal code, given that I have selected “France” as a country.
You have not specified a state.
So I look at the list. Arizona, California, Delaware, Oregon, and forty eight others I can’t be bothered to remember. The last time I looked, there wasn’t a Maryland in France.
So I delete the zip code.
Your zip code is invalid.
Fine. I’ll pick California and enter 90210.
That is an invalid zip code.
Fine. Let’s try state “Washington DC”, zip code “20500”.
Your country is invalid.
So I open a new tab and wade through loads of terms and conditions. Buried in a large paragraph about some rubbish about export licences is the words “We only supply addresses in the United States and Canada.”

Now, excuse me but shouldn’t the first point of call have been to notice that the country was incorrect and post a notice about this? Well, no, the first point should have been to only have US and Canada as available options.

I could say something rude about small-minded Americans right now, but I have received a similar problem from French sites. Not that the country is wrong, but that our address can’t possibly be right. Those few of you that know my postal address will know that it is a mere seven words including my name, postal code, and “France”. Yet the idiotic town-dwellers insist that there needs to be a street name, a house number, etc etc. Not so long ago my mother ordered some bird seed and such and it was going to be delivered by carrier. I facepalmed, because it would be the same rubbish that I got when I ordered a computer for my mom several years ago. And sure enough, on the day of delivery (thanks to on-line tracking) it never arrived and the reason? “Address incomplete or invalid”. So I was straight on the phone and given my length of attention span, twelve minutes of repeating musak did nothing for my temper. The woman at the other end barely got to work through her pre-programmed excuse before I informed her that I expect the parcel to be with me before I leave for work at half nine tomorrow morning or I will be filing a formal complaint. Stunned silence. So I continued. I don’t know what useless database you people use (and believe me, it ain’t easy saying that sort of stuff in French!) but entering my address as it was given to you into Google Maps will find us. Moreso as there is nothing else for a fair distance, there can be no ambiguity whatsoever. Okay, granted, Google will probably ask you if you wanted the place in France or China, but I think you can figure out which is relevant.
“But your address…” she tried to say.
“…works for La Poste. Works for the bank. Works for the tax office. Would you like me to scan and email my most recent tax form? Or will you accept that nobody in your company actually bothered to work out if this address was correct. You computer rejected it, and that was it.”
More silence. I could hear typing, so I guess maybe she was looking it up on Google Maps. I was informed that my parcel will arrive “tomorrow”.
Which it did. In the afternoon. With an apology from the driver. Still, compared to the horror stories of certain British carriers whose drivers are apparently paid per parcel, I guess this wasn’t so bad.

The only carrier that never gives problems is UPS. For all the rest… let’s say I try to avoid ordering things that would come via carrier.

I think I’ve used a carrier maybe five times in my life. Here’s a résumé:
1. Somebody who I don’t recall (hi if you’re reading) sold me an A3010 for eight quid. ParcelForce got it as far as Aldershot at which point it “vanished”. They blame a third party carrier. The company pretty much was NOT interested, eventually telling me that it was up to the sender to sort out. Wasn’t worth it for eight pounds given I’d already spent a lot more on international phone calls. Not so much a thumbs down as a “never touch ParcelForce with a bargepole”.
2. UPS delivered a Farnell catalogue. Mind-blowing, seeing the van pull up to give me that. Okay, it was a big box full of paper but surely that cost them? Thumbs up for UPS.
3. Mom’s computer. I think this was ChronoPost. And, yeah, invalid address plus an eternity on hold as there’s one harrassed girl manning the phone for the entirety of Metropolitan France. Either that or they cock up so much that it takes nearly half an hour to speak to somebody…
4. UPS again. Delivered a Beagle xM that I wasn’t expecting. The only quirk was the guy wanted paid for import duty – but this is quite normal for American-origin stuff.
5. GLS group. Bird food. Story above. ;-)

Result? 2/5, thanks to UPS twice getting it right.

Okay… what were we talking about again? (^_^)

PS: Some websites, like EDF, have a “Virtual assistant” that you are supposed to “talk” to as the first like of customer support. She can sometimes give amusing answers if you ask her age, if she’s single, if she likes pizza.
There was one, it might have been on the old Améli (social security) site that was genre-savvy enough to reply rien ne se passe to the input xyzzy.

I wonder how many of these people even know HTML and/or CSS

My impression is that an increasing number of sites are written (sic) using WordPress or similar and the people writing have nae clue about how they turns into web pages. So can’t fix anything.

WRT carriers. We just had a new fridge delivered. The form you have to sign says in the small print that you’ve agreed that you’ve checked that it works fine by signing. However the people delivering told us we had to leave it ‘off’ for 2 hours before use to let the coolant settle after being shuggled in the van on the way. Go figger, as the yanks say. :-)

Somehow I doubt the delivery men would have been happy to be told “OK, come back in 2 hours or more and I’ll sign the delivery note then”. Oddly they said nothing about the TandC on the form. Wonder why…

The agreement also states that signing comfirms that the fridge has no ‘leeks’. This I was easily able to check. Thank heaven they didn’t ask us to check it has no leaks, though, as we wouldn’t have been able to tell with it off anyway even if we had measurement kit to detect small amounts of coolant. 8-]

Oh, and they set it up off-plumb, so the door was hard to use.

All very impressive. Not.

Jim

The other problem is when the “designer” tries to be “clever”. Just last week we hired a design company to update one of our websites, and the results are… not great.

• White text on a yellow background, great for accessibility
• On the topic of accessibility, a custom font size menu that seems to exist exclusively to override browser preferences
• Facebook and Twitter logos messed with, breaking their guidelines and possibly their trademarks
• Our own logo not used in accordance with our own identity guidelines

This is all on paper and hasn’t been built yet, but this sort of thing doesn’t fill me with confidence!