What is it with local websites restricting access to non-IE browsers?
If you are viewing this page it means that you are currently running a browser which is incompatible with our site. The Liberty website has been designed to be viewed using Microsoft Internet Explorer, version 5 or above
...reads the Liberty Group website in Mozilla.
What is it with local websites restricting access to users with non-IE browsers?
Is it because they are being forced into the decision by a Microsoft-monopoly agreement? Maybe their development team aren't familiar with the importance of accessiblity and usability; the primary requirements for every website. Could they really be that ignorant and lazy?
Why do browser policies even exist? Browser wars are a thing of the past, websites are developed for users, not browsers or platforms. The tool is irrelevent. The web is a medium, and the browsers just present that medium. Let's use television as a comparison - imagine you could only watch Survivor or Idols if you had a Panasonic TH-42PW3 106cm diagonal Wide Plasma Display.
I've made it a habit to lash out at these sites in the past, and I've come to realise that it's not the best approach to take, under the belief that I was partly involved in turning around 20twenty's decision to develop and design for IE only.
So, the outcome of this post is that I have contacted Liberty, and will hopefully receive a response and answers to my questions above.
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20 December 2008
Sifiso03:03 am
I checked the liberty site using Firefox today. Seems the problem has been fixed. But I see they forgot to remove the “Best viewed at 1024×768 resolution using IE 5.5 or later” text in the footer.
I bet no one on the Liberty web team has realised yet how annoying that is to web visitors. You average web visitor does not know nor even care about monitor resolutions and browser versions.
So rubbing your knowledge of such things in their faces will make them switch their policies to competitors that actually know their web stuff.
The “Best viewed at..” statement is comparable to liberty offering vehicle insurance only for 15-year old Uno’s with 20 inch rims. Where’s the sense in that?
The sad thing is that for a private sector organisation to be – or even hinting at – limiting its online offering to certain web browsers hurts their bottom line more than anything else. It makes no sense at all.
Perhaps there should be a “W3C Unsolved Mysteries” mini-series that attempts to understand the reasoning behind such decisions. The lead actors would be jobless ex-scorpion investigators. Who knows, this stuff could be related to extra-terrestrial phenomena ;-)