Every once in a while you encounter a business that shows that uncaring mediocrity needn't stop the exchange of lots of money from consumers.  And sometimes you like to vent.  This is one of those times.  Computicket stands head and shoulders above its neighbour sites in South Africa in terms of archaic interface and uncaring attitude to what users want to do.

The first thing I did when looking at the Computicket site is rush over to someone with Internet Explorer to find out what stupid non-standard HTML was making the site so horrid on my screen.  Unfortunately (I think), it was just as ugly in IE.

Now, I don't know how to find out which colours go well together (as you can see here).  But I know when things are just so butt-ugly that it's best not to even show anyone.  And I have friends who I can show things to in advance to ensure I don't make a total fool of myself.  It seems Computicket doesn't have this luxury.

Now, branding is a good thing.  You have a logo with particular colours.  People start to associate those colours with your brand.  They start to get a positive feeling when surrounded by those colours in all your forms of contact - from advertising, newsletters, emails, and web sites.  Great stuff.  Unless, well, your branding seems to be dark grey, bright red, bright yellow, and bright white, and you try make a web site with only those colours.

Buttons?  Wow, that's quite retro.  And, with bright red text in bright yellow buttons, and bright yellow buttons on bright white background, quite nauseating as well.

At least they're not trying to display yellow text on a dark background (at least, not as far as I can see).  But they are placing white sections of page for the black text to live upon.  Which isn't a problem in itself.  Until the white section is only the size of the text in it, and you're left with 90% of your screen dark.

Enough about colours.  (Actually, while I'm talking about colours - where did that blue line at the bottom come from exactly?)

Now, I play games for the gameplay.  I know that's sacrilege to some people, demanding ever more realistic or fantastic video (and sometimes both).  But, I think you'll find, the average person would end up rating the dynamic of the game above the graphics.  Heck, some people are rediscovering ASCII text games.   So, despite looking a bit out of whack, how is it to use?

Well, if all you want to do is find a particular thing you want to book for, and there's only a few places showing it, it's not that bad.  If I search for the ballet, Giselle, being put on by the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, I get four venue options - one each for Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban.  If Computicket commanded the booking systems for more cinemas, this interface would just not be worth it in terms of wading through all the cinemas in the country.

What if I just want to find out what's on in the Western Cape?  Actually, I'd like to find out what's happening in Cape Town.  Much like those in Port Elizabeth aren't generally the type of people who fly over to East London to attend an event.  But it looks like that's just not what people want to do.

Anyway, so I'd just like to see what all is on in the Western Cape.  So, I select Western Cape as my region and press the search button.  Which gives me a list of venues.  Most of which give error messages when I visit them.  At this point, I think it's because there are no events there.

But, I figure out, if I put in the type of event and the region, I can get the events on the left, and the venues on the right.  I guess venue could be useful.  And, because I've given the type of event, selecting the venues shows me the shows that are playing there.  Well, that's certainly more useful - now I know the previous regional page was just broken, not that there weren't any events.

So, I see a movie I'd like to see.  I go through to its page.  And see the venues all around the country.  Yep, that's what the average user expects to happen when they're searching for Western Cape movies...

Besides looking a bit off and working a bit off, there's this matter of just having bugs due to the poor, abundant use of Javascript in links.  In about five minutes use of the site, moving in and out of various events and venues, I've been sent to the entirely wrong page a few times.  I know, it's probably only because I used the back button.  I'm such a bad user.  I'm sorry I did that.  But, uh, your utter lack of navigation at all doesn't help me work any other way.

And it's not like I just get sent to one of the previous events I looked at.  Or even going to a previous venue when I click one of the events.  Going to an event when I click on "All highlights"?!

You can tell a lot about a site by its HTML, CSS, and Javascript.  And Computicket doesn't disappoint.

HTML 4, loose.  Okay, I can live with that.  Just, uh, what are those <br /> tags doing there?

It seems having ugly colours in the web site itself isn't enough.  When you're lucky enough to use Internet Explorer, the following rather explicitly malicious CSS gives you a beautiful red, yellow, orange, green, and navy scrollbar!

scrollbar-face-color:yellow;
scrollbar-arrow-color:red;
scrollbar-track-color:#EE3439;
scrollbar-shadow-color:#EE3439;
scrollbar-highlight-color:orange;
scrollbar-3dlight-color:green;
scrollbar-darkshadow-Color:navy;

But, in exchange for that in IE, pretty much everything has a beautiful gradient:

filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient      (GradientType=0,StartColorStr='#F9F438',EndColorStr='#F9F438');

var dx = " progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft."
TipLayer.style.filter = "revealTrans()"+dx+"Fade(Overlap=1.00 enabled=0)"+dx+"Inset(enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=PLUS,motion=in enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=PLUS,motion=out enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=DIAMOND,motion=in enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=DIAMOND,motion=out enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=CROSS,motion=in enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=CROSS,motion=out enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=STAR,motion=in enabled=0)"+dx+"Iris(irisstyle=STAR,motion=out enabled=0)"+dx+"RadialWipe(wipestyle=CLOCK enabled=0)"+dx+"RadialWipe(wipestyle=WEDGE enabled=0)"+dx+"RadialWipe(wipestyle=RADIAL enabled=0)"+dx+"Pixelate(MaxSquare=35,enabled=0)"+dx+"Slide(slidestyle=HIDE,Bands=25 enabled=0)"+dx+"Slide(slidestyle=PUSH,Bands=25 enabled=0)"+dx+"Slide(slidestyle=SWAP,Bands=25 enabled=0)"+dx+"Spiral(GridSizeX=16,GridSizeY=16 enabled=0)"+dx+"Stretch(stretchstyle=HIDE enabled=0)"+dx+"Stretch(stretchstyle=PUSH enabled=0)"+dx+"Stretch(stretchstyle=SPIN enabled=0)"+dx+"Wheel(spokes=16 enabled=0)"+dx+"GradientWipe(GradientSize=1.00,wipestyle=0,motion=forward enabled=0)"+dx+"GradientWipe(GradientSize=1.00,wipestyle=0,motion=reverse enabled=0)"+dx+"GradientWipe(GradientSize=1.00,wipestyle=1,motion=forward enabled=0)"+dx+"GradientWipe(GradientSize=1.00,wipestyle=1,motion=reverse enabled=0)"+dx+"Zigzag(GridSizeX=8,GridSizeY=8 enabled=0)"+dx+"Alpha(enabled=0)"+dx+"Dropshadow(OffX=3,OffY=3,Positive=true,enabled=0)"+dx+"Shadow(strength=3,direction=135,enabled=0)"

A few warning bells went off when I saw this in the body element of the page:

<!-- 
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" xhref="https://content.computicket.com/computicket/styles/style.css" title="Default Style">
 -->
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> 
var NAV=navigator; 
if ( (NAV.appName == 'Netscape') && (parseInt(NAV.appVersion) > 4) ) { 
document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" xhref="https://content.computicket.com/computicket/styles/nsstyle.css">') 
} 
else { 
document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" xhref="https://content.computicket.com/computicket/styles/style.css">') 
} 
</script>

And, well, what's wrong with plain old links:

<a href="#" onclick="location.href='https://www.computicket.com/booking/computicket/StartNav/?pi=1031'" class="leftbtn">MOVIES</a>

Or, say, just using plain HTML?:

<script type="text/javascript">document.write('<tr valign="top">');</script>

1999 called. They want their browser sniffing back:

var agt=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var is_nav  = ((agt.indexOf('mozilla')!=-1) && (agt.indexOf('spoofer')==-1)
                && (agt.indexOf('compatible') == -1) && (agt.indexOf('opera')==-1)
                && (agt.indexOf('webtv')==-1) && (agt.indexOf('hotjava')==-1));
var is_gecko = (agt.indexOf('gecko') != -1);
var is_ie     = ((agt.indexOf("msie") != -1) && (agt.indexOf("opera") == -1));
var is_opera = (agt.indexOf("opera") != -1); 

Okay, I think the rant is over. I guess the polite thing to do is to actually suggest things for Computicket to do to improve their site.  I'd love to hear what other people dislike about the site, and suggestions on how the site could be improved.  And if there's something great about the site, I'm sure that'll make the poor person at Computicket that might read my rant feel a bit better...

My laptop is in for repairs.  I hope (since I suspect it may never be coming back).  Which has left me without a machine running a Unix-like operating system at home for the first time in over ten years.  So, for the first time in about the same amount of time, I'm using Windows with intent as something other than a games boot loader.

Okay, not intent.  I got tired of trying to make it remotely similar enough to my usual environment to do my productive work.  But web browsing, OpenOffice.org, and SSH.

I noticed earlier that there was this new-fangled Internet Explorer 7 in the updates.  I was somewhat intrigued, since generally you don't get new versions of software through updates - at least if you're following best practice.

Like others have, I generally recoiled at how poorly they made a tabbed interface (and besides the UI, Firefox at least learnt to tell me what URL I'm trying to go to in my address bar), and how unintuitive some of their new UI stuff is (for example, you can easily end up with a reload button instead of a "go" button).

And then, today, I wanted to check a page in IE.  And I couldn't go there.  Or to Google.  Or to any number of other places I decided to check.  It just didn't react to putting addresses in the address bar - no error messages, no change to the page, no dialogs hidden behind any windows, and me with no idea where to look for logs.  And no difference after restarting IE.

Except, for some reason, I could load up freshmeat.net - once, and never again.  No, I couldn't go to Microsoft sites either.  Except, say, if the site loaded up as my home page, and I clicked on links.  But type the address of the exact same page in manually in the address bar in another tab, and nothing...

Oh, and "Open" on the "File" menu works.

Oh, and did you know that if you type "asdf" into the address bar of IE, and press "control-enter", it'll change it to "http://www.asdf.com/"?  I despair at what lesson that teaches...

And, according to a knowledge base article, they've had this sort of problem before.  Great to see that they've improved things to provide more feedback when things go wrong...