Fresh Browser Lockout
I don’t often discover much arbitrary lockout stupidity these days. The Web Standards message seems to be getting through to the people at the code-face: developers at large corporates or their design agencies.
Occasionally a site will crop up with 2000-era broken browser-sniffing, like O2’s XDA site. I surfed on over using my browser of choice (Mozilla Firefox) and was presented with the following message:
This website has been optimised for Internet Explorer 5+ and Netscape 6+. We have detected that you have an older browser installed. Please update to the latest version browser to view this website.
AAAGGGGGHHHH!
How many times will I have to write to a clueless web development team to inform them that it doesn’t get much more "latest version" than Firefox 0.8? It is so much more modern than Netscape 6 that it’s easy to forget that they are from the same development source.
I’ll let you know how I get on…
UPDATE
Dear 02/xDA Webmaster,
I am trying to view your website. Because I don’t use one of your "approved" browsers (IE5+ or NS6+) I an being denied entry. I gained entry in the end by disabling JavaScript in my browser. Once I was in the site, it worked perfectly, proving that your browser detection is broken and flawed.
While I accept that it is your prerogative to decide who should gain access to your site, don’t you think that suggesting to users of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla 1.6 and Safari that they are using an “older” browser makes you look a little foolish? Should users of these browsers “downgrade” in order to use your site?
I am helping to evaluate the xDA for my company, so you may wish to consider the effect your developers’ tunnel vision is having on your sales. There are more browsers than IE and Netscape. Anyhow, Firefox is based on Mozilla, which is in turn the non-commercial arm of what was Netscape, before it was wound up by AOL last year. So: there is no Netscape, only Mozilla.
There is really no need for this kind of browser sniffing these days: if you design to web standards, everyone should be able to access your content, even if only the newer browsers get the full design.
Regards,
Tim Beadle