Home > Reference > Articles

Uncivil websites - browser compatibility problems

Offended by the off-hand way a website treated you recently? A cold put-down or lockout? Could, inadvertently, your own website be causing similar difficulties to some visitors? Read on.

A growing percentage of browsers are non-Microsoft, like Mac Safari and Mozilla Firefox, the latter a user-friendly version of the well-known Mozilla browser. Reportedly 6% of the new browsers installed nowadays are Firefox. Many visually impaired visitors are also using special browsers or screen readers.

However, it’s not uncommon for a web design team to use techniques that frustrate and even lock these people out. Perhaps the site works seamlessly with Internet Explorer, but exhibits patchy and quirky problems with other browsers.

Some web designers go a step further and actively allow access to only certain browsers or browser technologies. With the ‘wrong’ browser, you simply cannot view the content at all!

Let's start with a blatant example. It’s a basic tenet of accessible web site design not to depend on any technology that is not ubiquitous. Not all browsers however support javascript.

On a well-known London law firm’s site, if your browser doesn’t support javascript, you see a blank white screen!

Amusingly, hidden in the page HTML is the comment

<!-- Hide from JavaScript-Impaired Browsers

It appears that the designer consciously intended to hide the site. Strangely, once you’re past the homepage, everything seems to work without javascript anyway, so the blocking seems quite unnecessary.

A blank screen is pretty bad, but for something more uncivil, …when you try to open this large power company’s website with the Firefox browser, you see a page that says:
“We have detected that you are running a browser not supported by this website…It is recommended that you upgrade your browser to one of the below.”

They simply won’t let you into the site. No friendly stuff like ‘the site may not work so well but click here to continue anyway’.

A successful property development company’s website seems a bit rude.
Visit the site, and you will first notice that they give you three different choices of format for the site: text, html and Flash. Some would say this is empowering the user, but why force the user to make choices about format? Much simpler to design one site that meets everyone's needs. Flash content, if it is really vital, can be offered within the site at the right places, no need to have the entire site in Flash. Likewise, if you offer a text equivalent, is that because you know some parts of the site don't work with images switched off? Better then to ensure the one site works with and without images, leaving aside the cost burden of ensuring all three sites track with changes in design.

Anyway, if you select the HTML version and your screen resolution is greater than 600x800 (like the majority of Internet users), you get the warning:

“The website is optimised for 800x600 screen resolution.
Please be advised that your screen settings are not ideal for viewing this site.”

These chaps are not so forceful, so you can click 'continue' to get into the site despite this warning. But the next page nags you again about the screen size issue and introduces yet another browser techie issue:

“This site is optimised for 800x600 resolution 4x browsers with text size set at medium. If your browser cannot support frames go to the text site.”

Instead of a welcome, the user is left feeling twice criticised and nagged, just for using very common PC screen sizes, and what is ‘4x browsers’ all about (actually it means very old browsers, version 4)
Lastly, another website.

At a job search website when you click on the 'Recruiters' menu using a browser other than Internet Explorer, you get the message

“The premium content area of the recruiter's area has been designed to work with Internet Explorer 4.01 Service Pack 2 and above. We strongly recommend the use of Internet Explorer 5.5 and above for maximum functionality and speed (download latest here).”

Like the energy company mentioned above, there are no buttons to allow you to enter the site - you’re locked out. But strangely, the same pages blocked here are available via the 'post a job' button. And they all seem to work OK, so the warnings above seem unnecessary anyway.

In Conclusion, it’s very common for busy web developers to perform only perfunctory testing, using just the main market browser Internet Explorer - and this can bring quirky problems and uncivil responses.

The solution for the web manager is to have a regular regime of functionality audits specifically covering the issue of browser compatibility. The good news is that once problems are identified, they can often be quick and cheap to fix.