Crappy websites

[DaveB]

Arrrrrrrgh.

A national company, providing services to other large businesses and they can't get their bloody online ordering systems to work.

1st try, Day 1.

Login to the site for the first time and create my password. Ok.
Go back to actually login, no luck. Takes my name and password details but refuses to actually log me in.

Call to the help desk number : "Ah, not sure about that, I'll have to get one of our web people to call you back."

Never heard from them again. Called back the next morning.

"Oh yes, we know about that, you need to delete all your cookies and close and reopen the page."

2nd Try, Day 2.

Logged in after deleting cookies. Get to the welcome page. No menu's available.

Call the help desk again. "Oh yes, we know about that, I'll have to get the web team to fix it for you. They'll call you back when it's done."

Never heard from them.

Gave up, went home.

3rd Try, Day 2.

Logged in from home using Safari. Logged in ok. Got the menu's ok. Selected the online ordering option. "This page only works with Internet Explorer. Please try again using Internet Explorer."

Gave Up.

4th Try, Day 3 ( today ).

Logged in Ok. Got the menus Ok. Selected Online Ordering.
"This page is temorarilly unavailable"

Called the help desk. "Oh yeah, we know about that, there was some maintenance last night and they havn't finished yet. Can I take a number and get them to call you when it's done?"

Not holding my breath.

[NickFitz]

Logged in from home using Safari. Logged in ok. Got the menu's ok. Selected the online ordering option. "This page only works with Internet Explorer. Please try again using Internet Explorer."

In Safari's preferences, enable the Debug menu. From there, you can tell Safari to use an IE User Agent string - this works on a per-tab basis, so it won't mess anything else up.

It's possible it still won't work if their web folk are particularly incompetent, but it's usually worth a try.

[d000hg]

Is it really that hard to find a computer running Windows? People who refuse to have any Windows-based PC option are cutting off their nose to spite their face... sure you might only use Windows rarely if you prefer Mac/Linux, but it's being unrealistic to expect everyone will support what are still minority platforms.

[TheFaQQer]

it's being unrealistic to expect Microsoft will even attempt to conform to published web standards.

ftfy.

[DaveB]

In Safari's preferences, enable the Debug menu. From there, you can tell Safari to use an IE User Agent string - this works on a per-tab basis, so it won't mess anything else up.

It's possible it still won't work if their web folk are particularly incompetent, but it's usually worth a try.

Tried that. It appears they are indeed, particularly incompetent.

[DaveB]

Is it really that hard to find a computer running Windows? People who refuse to have any Windows-based PC option are cutting off their nose to spite their face... sure you might only use Windows rarely if you prefer Mac/Linux, but it's being unrealistic to expect everyone will support what are still minority platforms.

I have several computers at home running various flavours of windows as well as the Mac. The point is it's not just non windows platforms that are not supported, it's windows platforms using anything other than IE as well. Firefox, Opera, Safari for Windows etc. None of these will work with it. It's not that it's particularly hard to do, it's just lazyness on behalf of the developers.

It's not so much that it doesnt work, but the fact that every time I ring their helpdesk it appears to be a known problem. If it;s a known problem then fix it FFS

[Sysman]

Is it really that hard to find a computer running Windows? People who refuse to have any Windows-based PC option are cutting off their nose to spite their face... sure you might only use Windows rarely if you prefer Mac/Linux, but it's being unrealistic to expect everyone will support what are still minority platforms.

That might have been true half a dozen years ago, but not any more. OK, anyone here should know that they can run Winders in a virtual machine, but your typical consumer simply doesn't want an extra box* in the house to cope with sites who insist on MSIE, and will simply move on to another web site.

* an extra box can be hard to get past wifey/gf, especially when they work with Macs themselves

[original PM]

a serious question

we are about to go into some web development and the issue of which browsers to support is coming up.

firstly what are the most common broswers

secondly why don't people who create new browsers make sure they work with existing websites?

I am not overly techy so a few general ideas would be useful

Ta!

[Sysman]

I have several computers at home running various flavours of windows as well as the Mac. The point is it's not just non windows platforms that are not supported, it's windows platforms using anything other than IE as well. Firefox, Opera, Safari for Windows etc. None of these will work with it. It's not that it's particularly hard to do, it's just lazyness on behalf of the developers.

It's not so much that it doesnt work, but the fact that every time I ring their helpdesk it appears to be a known problem. If it's a known problem then fix it FFS

arrogance

[TheFaQQer]

firstly what are the most common broswers

Internet Exploder, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, SeaMonkey

secondly why don't people who create new browsers make sure they work with existing websites?

Because it's hard work - what some developers will do is staggering. Google put a HUGE number of websites through Chrome (essentially pointed Chrome at their search database), and still have some problems. For example, they can't automatically test password-protected sites.

The only thing a new browser can do is to try and work with a majority (or conform to standards and if there is a site problem, point out that the site is pants rather than the browser) and have a good facility to report faulty sites (as Chrome does).