IRCTC Ticket Booking - Tips and Tricks

Of late many stories and articles have been published in the media about the misuse of tatkal scheme by touts and travel agents. This to my knowledge is very much true.
Yet I have successfully managed to book tatkal tickets from irctc website, and I do it regularly for my personal use. Here is how I do it:

• I always use Mozilla Firefox as my internet web browser for booking tickets online. mozilla somehow communicates better, persists with the irctc.co.in server and gives very few timeout errors. 
• Please do not forget to install a very useful script from greasemonkey. the scrip is called 'auto refesh'.
• Login to your account (now https://www.irctc.co.in/eticketing/loginHome.jsf) web account atleast 30 minutes before the tatkal booking opens. By the way takal booking open at 10:00AM so you should login preferably at 9:30AM.
• When the first page opens do not type anything and keep your page refreshing at the regular intervals( within 3 minutes) if you have not installed auto refresh script.
• You will notice that as the booking open time approaches your page takes longer to load after each refresh. Please ensure your last refresh at 10:00 AM is around 9:58 or 9:59AM.
  
  
• When you notice that time in the bar as shown above is 10:00AM or more, process your booking accordingly. The faster the better, as you are competing with thousands others it is better to have a faster internet connection, good speed PC/Laptop and quick fingers to type faster.
• You will also need an ID detail of the traveller to fill in so keep the details handy before you jump in.

All the best.