IMS_Blog

I seem to be turning into something of a website complaints blog (after the rant about Lloyds-TSB and a quick mention of PowerGen’s). This time it is The Trainline which comes into the firing line.

For those that don’t know this is the site which allows you to purchase tickets for the British rail network online (I could go on about the insane rail pricing system but that would take at least a post of its own). All in all it’s not that bad a user experience (though it always irks me that it takes an intermediate page to get to the actual prices I understand that this is so you can indicate railcards, number of passengers etc). What gets me is the fact that it’s necessary to login to get to that prices page—surely I shouldn’t need to be logging in until I decide to buy something; most of the time I’m just checking prices. Actually what really annoys me though is the login page itself. It’s full of big bold writing, for things like forgotten passwords and terms and conditions and the form fields. Hidden in amongst all the noise is the little thing that 99% of the time you actually want to click on (the form fields get filled in by my browser, so I really am mouse driven at this point). Why oh why is the actual login link the smallest, least noticeable thing on that page? It takes me a moment to find it every bloody time (hmm, Greasemonkey scripty goodness may be in order…)

Edit: Added the screen capture I forgot to put in when writing the post!

Greasemonkey! A greasemonkey script to automagically zoom past the offending login page. See the script for instructions.