lmjabreu's blog

This is a long overdue rant against ViaCTT, a service provided by the ( only ) Portuguese Post Office, CTT, and created by his geniousness Luís Nazaré.

downforeveryoneorjustme result for viactt.pt

That’s the first thing I like about it, requires you to specify the subdomain, common illness.

The Looks

Anyway, Luís( not this one here ) states this is a Million euro project ( infra-structure costs not included ), alrighty, let’s talk about this million euro web service they built, starting with the homepage:

ViaCTT Home

First thing my right side of the brain said was: “eww”, my left side puked afterwards. It’s ugly on the outside(above) and on the inside:

ViaCTT sub-subpar code

Now, remember when I said this was a service provided by the CTT? ( hint hint: ViaCTT ) Then check this out:

CTT Home

Layout’s a bit broken, but humm, it’s a bit radically different from ViaCTT, lord knows why. The insides are all wrong too, my beautiful template, twisted away.

A Step Closer to the Core

Enough about looks, let’s step a bit into the core of this million euro beast, let’s try to login!

ViaCTT Login

What’s this, a virtual keyboard? I’m not gonna demand OpenID or an uber safe login method here, but humm, those virtual keyboards are a pain in the ass, they’re not safe*, and harm user experience, oh and can make something as simple as a login form to require javascript( instd of using it only to improve experience ).

*or: as safe as the OS you’re using, plus, they provide visual( and audio: mouse clicks ) feedback added to the slower input rate, which makes it easier for someone near you to snatch your pass that if you were using your old kbd. Seriously, it’s like these things were designed to teach your password to others.

Anyhoo, equip your battle armor, weapons, brace yourselves ‘cos we’re gonna step a bit further, here’s your dashboard:

ViaCTT UI ClusterFuck

I’m not gonna waste time going through the tabs, but please read the comments on the above image.

THE CORE

Alright, I decided to leave this for last, The Core of ViaCTT, the essence, the ( official ) reason or this aberration to breathe among us( no offense to aberrations throughout the world, lol ).

According to the creator, this service isn’t supposed to provide its users with an email inbox, I wish it was, so I could simply order GMail Pop Fetcher to rescue my bills from ViaCTT inbox.

Luís Nazaré’s description goes something like this:

Via CTT intends to allocate a digital post box to every citizen, where, similar to physical mail, each one can receive and process their bills, invoices, payment warnings and other B2C and A2C records in a single digital inbox, solely addressed by CTT – safe, free, universal and convenient, like no other.

Now, digital post box sounds a bit like email to me, dunno, but maybe I’m going nuts so we better check how ViaCTT actually works.

When an entity you subscribed to has a new bill for you to happily pay, they send it as pdf to ViaCTT addressed to you, ViaCTT notifies you by email that you have a new bill to pay*, you open your email,open viactt, type in your username, click in your password, decipher the icons and click on the unread document title so the server sends you a pdf’ed bill, and afterwards it’s the standard bill paying ritual.

Wouldn’t it be simpler if you just.. oh I dunno, emailed me that pdf? Or if you wish, email it to anyone else in the world so they gain access to the information required to pay my bills, heh.

*or annoy you with useless newsletters, notifications of services not available in your area like it happened to me today.

IMO, the core of the service isn’t that bad, I think it’s handy to have my address serving as a digital ( invisible ) one, I just wished I wasn’t forced to login to viactt so I can download a file.

Something else I’d like to see happen is the complete switch of B2C and A2C to digital medium, only ‘romantic’, impossible to turn digital items would get to my postal address.

Hard to explain.
That’s all folks.