Immigration Website - Really?

[Oxx]

Who thought it was a good idea to put a full screen YouTube video which plays automatically on the home page? Ludicrous, and showing no respect for people's bandwidth.  Experience the nonsense at https://www.immigration.go.th/

 

If they've got the resources to do pointless stuff like this they should also have them to fix all the broken bits of their online presence, too.

[Matzzon]

It does not play automatically! Even if it did, you can just touch on or click on the screen to stop it. 

Guess the line of complaints was short today.

 

Ok, it is playing automatically and can not be stopped in the english version. However, not much to complain about. Will not eat much bandwidth, at the same time as you will not stay on the first page too long.

[RichCor]

7 hours ago, Oxx said:

Who thought it was a good idea to put a full screen YouTube video which plays automatically on the home page?

They seem to have swapped out the distracting background video now for a static image. The site is still trying too hard to be modern and hip for my taste.

[Pib]

I'm just glad most everything is in Thai language even when selecting English language....wouldn't want to put Google Translate out of business.  I just love the Google Translate translations as some of them are actually kinda close for those webpages that Google Translate can translate.

 

 

 

[Isaan Alan]

When you go to the section which says find an immigration office" it says "This page cannot load Google Maps correctly". 55 55

Even though I selected English it show the addresses in Thai. Why bother? 

I was in IT for over 30 years and was renowned for my "user friendly" programs. Thai immi sites are "farang" intolerant.

I get the impression that 90% of the program testing must be just in Thai.

[RichCor]

9 minutes ago, Isaan Alan said:

I get the impression that 90% of the program testing must be just in Thai.

Testing??   ????

 

...I guess *somebody* had to sign off on it before it went live.

[tgw]

19 minutes ago, Isaan Alan said:

When you go to the section which says find an immigration office" it says "This page cannot load Google Maps correctly". 55 55

Even though I selected English it show the addresses in Thai. Why bother? 

I was in IT for over 30 years and was renowned for my "user friendly" programs. Thai immi sites are "farang" intolerant.

I get the impression that 90% of the program testing must be just in Thai.

they probably don't have the budget for a proper English-speaking web developer.

to be fair, Google changed its terms of service recently(-ish) and is responsible for such maps not loading correctly anymore.

 

regarding Thai and English language, this is due to the first reason I mentioned, they probably don't have the budget to properly pay a competent web developer, and as far as I know the most commonly used CMS, i.e. Wordpress and Joomla aren't fully capable of handling multiple languages. they can show content and link titles in different languages, but can't rewrite URLs in different languages and the UI will often be left untranslated.

Also, local webmasters that are paid peanuts (because I guess the police bosses here still don't take working on a website seriously) try to cut as many corners as possible and post a lot of text content in Thai languages as images, making machine translation impossible.

 

I can see why they don't have the right people to make websites: most officers there wouldn't understand why the web developer, really a kid "playing" with the computer all day from their point of view, should make more money than a Major or Lt-Colonel carrying a weapon and doing "real" police work...

 

it was the same some years ago in Western institutions. we will just have to wait for a generation of morons to reach retirement.

 

testing?

it's quite clear that for most sites of Thai institutions, the testing is done by the boss' assistant with very limited English skills once the "webmaster" (student in second year of computer science) is done making the website.

 

 

[techietraveller84]

Despite its imperfections, I'm glad to see the government putting some effort into modernizing and making certain procedures more accessible.

[dave s]

9 hours ago, tgw said:

Also, local webmasters that are paid peanuts (because I guess the police bosses here still don't take working on a website seriously) try to cut as many corners as possible and post a lot of text content in Thai languages as images, making machine translation impossible.

There are several "PR" public relations governmental sites, that like to package information as mini-posters. If one site is just copying the artwork provided by another agency, it can insert a link to that image. But if new content is being created, you have to write (and spell check, and fact check, and ...) that content, then convert it into an image, so it is then more work to use a picture.

 

There are optical character recognition programs that try to convert a picture back into text. But many Thai letters have only tiny differences from other letters, which get lost in the "modern", swooshy fonts the web designer always picks, and so an OCR program produces garbage Thai text out of the picture, which Google Translate then butchers. The 7-11 and Makro cell phone apps are particularly hideous, this way.

[dave s]

Today is National Gateway Time-out Day in Thailand. Anything you try to do in TVF will give you a free 504 error.

[dave s]

And again.