Remove security tag?

[michael adams]

Its not just designers of self service tills either. The BFI - British Film Institute use to be a good source of short documentary films which could be downloaded. And faulty aspect ratios resulting from dodgy transfers, corrected if necessary

They replaced this with their own "BFIviewer" or whatever its called.

All the other viewers I've ever come across - Youtube, IPlayer etc etc have a progress bar at the bottom of the screen, with play and pause buttons on the left. Normally if you move the mouse over the actual film the progress bar disappears. But if you keep it over the progress bar then it stays on screen allowing you to immediately pause the action. But not on the BFI abortion. The progress bar disappears after one or two seconds wherever the mouse its positioned, if it's not moved. A totally gratuitous "feature" which makes it impossible to pause the film unless the mouse is constantly jiggled about. Ironically the only time the progress bar remains on screen is when the film is paused, thus making it necessary to edit it out from any screen captures.

michael adams

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[Robert]

Find an old hard disk drive, take it to pieces and you will have 2 very strong small magnets. Magnetic tag removers are available on eBAY for around £6; just ordered one for my local charity shop ......

[alan_m]

My bank and credit card company have recently decided to improve their customers on-line experience by redesigning their web pages.

For me all they have done is to make their existing on-line services more convoluted. Why stick with the old one page of menus when they can be split over three or four pages, all with different page formats and each with no easy way of backtracking to previous viewed pages. Add to this the use of corporate colours for text that make the page(s) more difficult to read unless you have perfect vision.

[Davey]

Many, many years ago there was a TV series called 'The Organisation', starring Donald Sinden. Its purpose was to make everybody's life as hard as possible. It worked to make packaging un-openable, and its crowning glory was the little old lady in a blue Mini, driving round and round a major roundabout, with the left indicator flashing. This is just the modern version.

[michael adams]

Basically because they "can" do something at little additional cost, which looks or sounds "impressive" to your average four year old, then they "will" do it. Regardless of whether it's actually useful, or not.

Like having a running commentary on all buses and trains in London, giving the destination of the bus or train every couple of minutes. Often at full volume, depending on where you're seated . Presumably for the benefit of any dribblers who've already forgotten what it is, since they got on.

And it goes without saying the latest incarnation of the Barclaycard site has been successfuly transformed into an abortion.

michael adams

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[Davey]

That makes me glad that the only time I have had a Barclays account was when I worked in South Africa back in 1982. Long before the internet made it there, they still had one TV station, which spoke English on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, Afrikaans on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday, and alternated Sundays.

The hotel bar did a good trade instead.

[Dave Liquorice]

Web "designer" who hasn't had any useabilty training and is unaware of the "three click" rule. ie if some one can't get to where they want to be in three clicks it's click too many. Well constructed crumb trails

Another rule, don't break the back buttton.

There does seem to be a grwoing trend to have light grey text on white. Awful, hard to read. That and the use of tiddly

Aye, some sites are almost unuseable as they shuffle things about the screen as 2 M Bytes of javascript is loaded and run. "8 second rule", any page should be fully rendered and stable in less than 8 seconds. Any longer and people get impatient. "Stable" once an object has appeared on screen don't fing move it.

Another growing trend presumably rooted in touch screens (tablets, even large ones) and mobile phone use of the web is to have huge coloured blocks for each link/action but only 4 viewable at a time. PITA on a desktop all you have is a dozen words and acres of blank space.

I can see that being irritating for locals but for a visitor it's damn useful to know that you have got on the right train/bus.

I bet it's not as bad as:

Entirely javascript, once you've refined a search a bit hitting the back button takes you right back to the begining with any refinements removed. Don't break the back button!

Every time you alter a search criteria it goes straight off to relist the matches. OK if it did it quickly, less than the "8 second rule" but it takes a couple of minutes *each time*.

The various lists of equipment/features have duplicate entries across the lists and often multiple variations on the same thing: "Air conditioning" "Air Conditioning" "Automatic Air Conditioning". Not only that they are very long, so trying to find say "Heated front screen" or is that "Heated Windscreen" or "Windscreen - Heated".. is nigh on impossible.

I just hope the same people don't write the firmware for the many microprocessor based control systems that modern cars have...

[dennis]

You must have the patience of a saint. If it takes 8 seconds I will have googled elsewhere if there is an alternative.