Bad Login Page of the Week - Emusic

I've been meaning to start posting when I find bad login pages. They annoy the hell out of me. I understand that logging on is part of the process of creating the whole personalised, big love-in feeling that comes with returning to a site but there are times when it feels like the site just doesn't want to let me in.

Emusic is an example of where it has gone wrong but could easily be set right. When I visit emusic it remembers who I am - presumably through a cookie - and so gives me recommendations. Overall it's a pretty good service and they have some excellent music. But, whenever I "do" something, such as bookmark an album for later download or even make a purchase, I am taken to the log-on screen again. OK, fair enough, I don't mind validating that I want to make the purchase. Firefox remembers my username and password form me so all I should have to do is click on the log-on button or, more likely, press the enter key and sail straight through.

Except that the page is poorly designed. Instead of recognising that I already have an account, and that it even knows who I am, it pre-selects the "create account" option forcing me to click two things in thwo different locations. Then it follows it up by completely forgetting what I wanted to do, forcing me to do it again.

It's idiotic.

It's bad design.

It has been a strange week, particularly on the job front. I had to finally get into gear and sign on so I telephoned the number I had been given and arranged an appointment for the next day. I was told to be there at 9:45 so I could start filling in the forms because their computer system was down and they could not do it for me. I turned up but the office does not open until 10, which was a bit frustrating. I had to agree my contract for getting back to work, to apply for so many jobs a week and so on, and then my application had to be sent off to assess my eligibility because I had been out of the country for a year, in case I might be foreign or something. I was also given a few jobs to apply for that they found for me on the computer. Apparently they can only look locally but if you go to the website yourself, www.jobcentre.gov.uk, you can do a national search. One of the jobs had to be applied for that same day so I emailed them my CV. Got asked to come for interview the next day (in Reddish, near Stockport), which I thought went pretty well but I always feel the pressure on the technical side because I simply haven't done any programming for a year. And yesterday they phoned up to find out if I would be interested in taking the job. Nothing has been absolutely confirmed yet but it looks very positive. Good opportunity, good salary. Should find out more details the start of next week.

Grrr. One thing with regularly using different computers to access the various sites that I publish to or read or use to (attempt to) manage my life - logging on generally sucks. Most sites you visit and you have a big advert for signing up and a tiny link hidden away somewhere for regular users. In the case of Flickr, because I joined before it was taken over by Yahoo, I have to visit three pages before I can actually log in and see my account. It's moronic. Bloglines, Remember the Milk, Box.net are all the same. What is so bad about letting the people who actually use (and in some cases pay for) your service get access to them quickly and easily?

More playing about with Google, but this time with googlepages. My old website has been moderately popular, mainly because of the cut-up machine, but has been in a considerable limbo since UKOnline disabled the facility to upload changes through any mechanism except directly logging on to their servers. This always seemed to me a shame but at the same time I moved onto Blogger and found that maybe I didn't need a website anymore. However, with Google's new service I decided that maybe it was time to have another look at what a personal website should be.
I did take a quick look at googlepages when it was first announced but found the lack of javascript (an essential for the cut-up machine) and no abiliy to create your own template a bit too limiting. This time around there are still no personalised templates but there is the addition of google widgets, exactly like those used on the Google homepage, which can use javascript. So I spent Sunday evening playing with that and created a cut-up machine (which you can add to your desktop by clicking here: ).
That evening I fell ill with some kind of nasty food poisoning and spent most of Monday and Tuesday in bed. This morning, not really wanting to get on with very much else, I've been playing with the site and have now created a new(ish) homesite. So far it's just content from the old one and I haven't moved everything yet. But not bad for a morning's work.
Not that it has all been that easy. The lack of templates means that I am stuck with the scheme that Google has created and cannot modify it at all. So, if I want to change something on one page I have to go through all of them and change each one. It also means that it is impossible to create a generic menu system. To get around this I had to create another special widget and add it manually to each page. This seems ridiculous when compared with the functionality that blogger already offers and hopefully will be fixed soon.
Aside from that it works quite neatly. The page editor is simple and allows anyone to create a website. You can also upload pages and images (up to 100MB) so if I had wanted I could have used that facility to create a carbon copy of my old website without much fuss (except for the lack of folders).
So now I just have to decide what the website is for. Afterall I do have my blog so what's the point? I've yet to really decide. I think I want to look at the site as a platform for my writing, another plank on the muddy path of treating it as a career, and so there will be content and organisation changes over the next few months. Much of the older content will, I think, be archived off to the side to make way for other stuff. Now that I can. Unless the changes announced to Blogger today change my mind again.
The new home page can be seen at: http://gary.leeming.googlepages.com
Setup your own pages at: http://www.googlepages.com (you'll need a Google account)
Information on creating Google Gadgets: http://www.google.co.uk/apis/homepage/