Browsers become business bugbear

[MacBytes]

Category: 3rd Party Software
Link: Browsers become business bugbear (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20041006094811)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[Nermal]

Other Web sites such as Westpac and Citibank -- which use browsers as a conduit for online transactions -- have similar restrictions.

Interesting, I use Westpac (although I'm in NZ, not Australia), and I haven't had any problems whatsoever with Safari.

[shamino]

Interesting, I use Westpac (although I'm in NZ, not Australia), and I haven't had any problems whatsoever with Safari.
With both Mozilla and Safari (don't know about Firefox), there are undocumented procedures to enable a "debug" menu which will (among other things) let you configure the browser to lie about its identity.

In many cases (but not all), this is enough to make an unfriendly web site work. Many times, the site contains scripts that simply check a browser version, even when the actual page content will run everywhere else.

[Nermal]

Admittedly I don't know much about web programming, but surely it would make more sense to ask the browser 'can you do this?' rather than 'are you IE?'

[paxtonandrew]

Interesting, I use Westpac (although I'm in NZ, not Australia), and I haven't had any problems whatsoever with Safari.

The St. George Au Web banking site has a heart attack every time it sees Safari, and tells me to use IE or Netscape, the flaw is, there is a little continue button at the bottom, and when clicked on, allows you to continue using Safari. The funny thing is, there is numerous banners all displaying 'NOT COMPATIBLE WITH XP SERVICE PACK 2' all over the site. WTF?

[shamino]

The St. George Au Web banking site has a heart attack every time it sees Safari, and tells me to use IE or Netscape, the flaw is, there is a little continue button at the bottom, and when clicked on, allows you to continue using Safari. The funny thing is, there is numerous banners all displaying 'NOT COMPATIBLE WITH XP SERVICE PACK 2' all over the site. WTF?
Sounds like your bank has a gang of idiots managing the web site.

I can understand it if they don't test against Opera. I can even understand not testing against Safari - there are still tons of Windows bigons designing web sites (and sites created with FrontPage by people who coldn't make the page compatible if they wanted to.) But incompatible with XPSP2? That's just plain incompetance. SP2 was available in preview form for over six months - plenty of time for them to test and fix their site.

They obviously don't care about their customers very much.