Posts Tagged ‘search’

Flat hunting online – a varied user experience

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I’ve recently been looking for a new flat, and have been surprised by the wild differences, in terms of basic usability, of the various agency websites I’ve visited. The experience has served as a useful reminder of the need to keep usability at the forefront of the planning stage for any website.

With these kind of websites, you’d think that such functionality would be fairly standard across the board, with most sites taking a similar approach. But far from it. Here are some examples:
(more…)

The Cookie Monster strikes again

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Please note the title of this article is just a bad pun, and not a reference to the cookiemonster exploit attack.

Many Scottish authorities are in the process of transferring their vacancies to myjobscotland – a jobs portal allowing all Scottish Government employers to advertise and process their vacancies in one place. A great idea!

However, there is a problem – you can’t search for vacancies without cookies enabled:

No session cookie found.

Possible causes for this problem are:-

* You are viewing this page from within a frameset.
* Your browser security settings are blocking all cookies.

Now, although I appreciate the need for cookies in many situations, I really can’t see why they are required for a simple search. The site does offer functionality to create an account, sign up for job alerts and apply online, but you don’t have to do any of these things to just look up jobs.

Read more about this problem