Brewsterware

Having used talktalk’s new webmail application for a few weeks now, I can honestly say it gives a bad user experience.

Their old webmail application was very simple, straightforward and very fast. There was a choise of different interfaces you could choose from which where dependent on your choise of browser. I always choose the simple interface as it was easy to use and very fast, but there were options for slicker interfaces that used AJAX.

Now I don’t have a choise. I put in my username and password, and I am subjected to a splash screen - something that I hate seeing with web applications. I think this is probably because I expect web applications to be fine tuned so that they can run efficiently in different browsers.

When the splashscreen disappears, I get an irritating voice saying “You have mail!”, and then I get todays news. What the f*** do I want the news for?! I’ve just logged into my webmail account to get my mail… grrr. Usually, this screen takes a while to load as it contacts an ad server to display an advert which must take up about an 8th of the screen - yet more time wasted.

Only then can I click on “inbox” and read my mail. However, this isn’t the end! When I click on a mail that I want to read, I am once again presented with a page loading splash screen - what a load of s***.

Sorry talktalk, but your webmail service is the pits.