irctc.co.in brought a revolution in India when it first launched the facility to book tickets for Indian Railways over the internet. Although the site has been updated a number of times to upgrade on functionality and looks, it still lacks the elegance & intuitiveness of a modern day web 2.0 site. Subsequently, many tech savvy users (including me) prefer to book their tickets at cleartrip.com or other more intuitive sites which offer a more ajaxy and new tech interface which is simple and cool to use.
Not anymore! Check out the beta version of irctc.co.in. The new beta version has a much cleaner and neat interface. It is based on AJAX which means you can book your tickets in fewer pages and fewer clicks. The home page (Plan my travel) looks like this:
Unlike the old interface, the train search results and availability are displayed in the same page. There is no longer a need to specify the class of travel while searching as all the available classes are displayed in the results. Clicking on the respective radio button for a class displays the fare and availability on the selected date plus five days in advance. You can also hover over the Fare Summary link to get the breakup of the fare.
Clicking on Book for a particular day will take you to the booking screen which is pretty much similar to the current one:
The remaining screens are also similar to the current ones, only neater and much more readable, thanks to the choice of minimalistic colors. Note that you can book tickets through the beta site. The beta label merely indicates that there might be some minor issues with the site which the team is fixing.
What is interesting to note is that both current and beta versions of irctc.co.in now support almost all the browsers:
irctc.co.in is one of the best and most successful internet initiative from the Government of India. It is good to see that the team is keeping itself abreast with the latest technologies and trends.
[via irctc.co.in]
One response to “Check out the swanky new (beta) version of irctc.co.in”
I have an IRCTC account which is locked second time.
When i tried to reset the password through forget password link, it asks User id, question and Answer. I provided all the details and it throws an error "Answer is Incorrect". This happend second time and both the times i tried to login through the actual password.
I waited for a week and there was no response from IRCTC customer care. I called them up on 24 Hrs. Customer Support at 011-23340000 and it took about 12 calls to make them understand about the issue. When ever i called up the customer support the person attnding the call will redirect me to someone else after listening to my detail and again i need to explain whole story, inshort that was waste of time and money.
I sent an email at care@irctc.co.in also submit at http://www.consumercourt.in/railways/14030-irctc-… and got an automated email as Ticket Confirmation for the request.
IRCTC should hire service and satisfaction oriented support executives so that it a common man has no pain of wasting time and money.