Alternative browser villains named and shamed
By John Leyden
Published Friday 25th October 2002 09:29 GMT
Updated Our stories on how online banks, retailers and utilities make life difficult for Linux users, or just people who prefer alternative browsers (such as Opera) has touched a nerve among many of our readers.
Although Opera, Mozilla and KDE's Konqueror allow user agent spoofing, which allows you to change your preferences to impersonate either IE or Netscape, this isn't always effective to get access to IE/Netscape only sites - particularly those that use ActiveX heavily. This browser cloaking workaround also lacks elegance - not least because e-commerce firms will think Opera fans are using IE, justifying their view that alternative browser support isn't needed.
Banks, who are naturally financially sensitive, fail to test for alternative browsers because the cost-benefit analysis doesn't add up, we're told. The suggestion from some financial outfits that they can't be sure alternative browsers are secure is, we believe, a red herring. After all they recommend IE, don't they?
Chicken and Egg
Other e-commerce outfits think along the same lines as banks, developers tell us. Unless some breakeven percentage of a customer base uses Linux or Opera, the thinking goes, then clients won't insist their systems are "made compatible".
Developers should follow (of course) platform independent standards, but in the real world many don't. The situation is made all the more difficult by proprietary features in some browsers themselves.
So it's not easy to get it right but there are many organisations who pull off this trick. Kudos to these outfits, which we'll call our Internet saints. Of course there's many who through laziness/incompetence persist in making life miserable for alternative browser/OS users, let's call these organisations Internet sinners.
Based on your voluminous feedback to our earlier stories we've drawn up a list of Internet saints and sinners (browser fascists). We're not terribly optimistic, but there's just a chance this list might prompt those in the latter camp to consider whether they need to reform their approach.
For a list of the offenders as well as some inline links in the text above, go visit the referenced site. [:)]
Also, please note the date of the article. Some of those listed may actually accept alternative browsers now. [;)]
