Annoyingly, Google has disabled Silverlight in its Chrome browser. They have stated that this was done to improve Chrome’s security, speed, and stability. However it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that this was, at least partly, a dig by Google against Microsoft (who provide and support Silverlight – and who are a key rival to Google).

TruckcomST uses Microsoft Silverlight so from now on, unfortunately, users won’t be able to use TruckcomST in Chrome. We recommend that all users should use Internet Explorer (IE) going forward. While IE isn’t the best browser for some things, for using Silverlight it’s the best bet – because it’s a Microsoft browser and Silverlight is a Microsoft system. Microsoft have promised to continue supporting Silverlight 5 (the version we use) in IE until at least December 2021.

(Note: For those who have just upgraded to Windows 10, please note that IE is not the same as the new Windows 10 browser called “Edge”. Edge doesn’t support Silverlight, so you need to find IE and run that instead. It would be have been great if Microsoft could have avoided this particular confusion factor!)

The Chrome change has affected a number of other systems as well, for instance Sky Go, which is a very widely used web application. Sky, like us, are recommending that users should switch to a different browser.

For the technically minded, there’s a bit more background here on the Chrome change. If you need further advice on all of this, do contact us.

One of the things we’ve realised is very important in Truckcom is to make things as easy as we possibly can for drivers.

To help with this, there’s a recent new feature we’ve provided which helps them to log on, for the first time, simply by scanning a QR code on their smartphone.

To explain this, first I need to show you one of the customised driver user guides Truckcom has been able to generate for some time now (the image below is just the first page – most guides are two pages):

You can see that this takes the driver through a step-by-step sequence explaining to them how to use Truckcom. The new feature is in the first two steps. When they first use Truckcom, the driver now sees the following screen:

He simply presses “QR Setup” and scans the code in step 2, and, immediately, he gets his username, password, and company name automatically entered – no typing required.

We hope that this will speed things up for new users. It’s an example of the many ways that Truckcom tries to make things as easy as possible for all users.