Reply to: Crapita At It Again...

[Great Parks]

Nothing surprises me about amateurish websites! They still seem to be the rule rather than exceptions.

You'd be amazed (well probably not, come to think of it) at the number of password prompts that allow only alphanumeric characters! I mean FFS

Not long ago, I had to enter a password to register with some website, and it accepted the longish password I chose. Later, when I tried to log in, it said my password was invalid (not "user or password is invalid", which is all it should have said, but that is a mere detail) Anyway, having a hunch it might have truncated the password, I tried successively shorter leading substrings to log in, until the six-character one worked!

What do you do with clueless idiots like whoever wrote that rubbish? I bet it also stored passwords in plain text!

A government website shouldn't be amateurish though!

But, yes - I see many examples of the kind of thing you highlighted in your post every day.

Particular bugbears of mine include sites with case sensitive usernames (only a password is case sensitive in my world!) and sites with fields that don't strip out whitespace. You know the one where you copy a password from an email and paste it in with a bit of superfluous whitespace & you get Access Denied. Had me scratching my head a few times that one!

[OwlHoot]

So you think a "date picker" on a govt website that is a dropdown containing the nos 1-31, a dropdown containing the months of the year & another dropdown conataining every year back to 1900 that allows user's to select any combination with no validation is acceptable?

I wouldn't even let that out the door for the booking system I maintain for my local squash club.

Nothing surprises me about amateurish websites! They still seem to be the rule rather than exceptions.

You'd be amazed (well probably not, come to think of it) at the number of password prompts that allow only alphanumeric characters! I mean FFS

Not long ago, I had to enter a password to register with some website, and it accepted the longish password I chose. Later, when I tried to log in, it said my password was invalid (not "user or password is invalid", which is all it should have said, but that is a mere detail) Anyway, having a hunch it might have truncated the password, I tried successively shorter leading substrings to log in, until the six-character one worked!

What do you do with clueless idiots like whoever wrote that rubbish? I bet it also stored passwords in plain text!

[northernladuk]

Maybe I'm just a saddo but I have a file that lists all my previous addresses and dates I lived in them. I have a similar file for every contract I've had.

They come in handy occasionally.

So do I

[Great Parks]

So the problem was rank stupidity in the end? Inneresting.

So you think a "date picker" on a govt website that is a dropdown containing the nos 1-31, a dropdown containing the months of the year & another dropdown conataining every year back to 1900 that allows user's to select any combination with no validation is acceptable?

I wouldn't even let that out the door for the booking system I maintain for my local squash club.

[ladymuck]

Maybe I'm just a saddo but I have a file that lists all my previous addresses and dates I lived in them. I have a similar file for every contract I've had.

They come in handy occasionally.

[northernladuk]

Finally got it submitted.

It was bombing out when I was submitting my address history.

I can't remember any exact dates to but in the from/to date so I was just selecting the 31st for each month. Of course, their datepicker allows you to pick 31 November which then blows up server side .

Taxi!

So the problem was rank stupidity in the end? Inneresting.

[Great Parks]

Finally got it submitted.

It was bombing out when I was submitting my address history.

I can't remember any exact dates to but in the from/to date so I was just selecting the 31st for each month. Of course, their datepicker allows you to pick 31 November which then blows up server side .

Taxi!

[Great Parks]

I seem to recall a similar problem, answer was to try different browsers and see what happens.

Isn't that just wholly unacceptable for a public facing govt website or am I being naive? FFS!

[anonymouse]

I seem to recall a similar problem, answer was to try different browsers and see what happens.

[Great Parks]

Inneresting story.

Not especially. Rather a highly frustrating experience when I know that I could single handedly put together a site that is much more watertight than the rubbish that Crapita and their minions have produced at God knows what cost to the tax payer.

I have a similar experience every month when I pay my council tax.

[covbob]

Inneresting story.

[DonaldJTrump]

Sometimes the Gods conspire against you!
Explain the situation and ask whoever for a temp waiver to protect the Monday start

[Great Parks]

Right, so I get to the final confirmation page, tick all the checkboxes and click Complete and it just realods the page. No errors, nothing.

Go and make a coffee, come back and my session's timed out and I've lost everything

[Great Parks]

It didn't like my address - there's a comma in address line 1 which works everywhere else but not here.

Their validation's pretty cr@p. Client and server side to dish out an error like that.

[Great Parks]

Can you not do it via this link, or does it ultimately end up in the same place?

https://www.gov.uk/request-copy-criminal-record

That uses GOV.UK Verify. I have to use the other link to enter the agency details