If you know anything about me, you know I love Firefox. I’ve used it since the days of Phoenix 0.1, I wear a Firefox t-shirt (though not around the office), and most recently I’ve been alpha testing Gran Paradiso. (Side note: a number of Microsoft employees have complemented me on my Gran Paradiso wallpaper, not noticing the “Firefox 3″ banner being pulled by the airplane). It seems there’s nothing out on the web that I can’t browse with Firefox. Consequently, I was quite surprised when I clicked the link to register at mytravelers.com to pay my renters insurance and received this dialog:
Really? You don’t support a (superior) browser that now holds about 25% market share? What’s the dealio? Not content with that, I checked the FAQ and read this tidbit:
What browsers work best on your website?
For optimal performance we recommend you use one of the following browsers when viewing the site.
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0
- Macintosh Safari 2.0
- Firefox 1.0.7
Firefox 1.0.7? You’re shitting me, right? Well, I checked the source code of the front page, and apparently I am not being shitted. (Is that the right phrase?) I’m no JavaScript expert, but check out this crap code:
else if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")!=-1)
{
//Do logon or registration if using 'Firefox1.0.7' or 'Firefox1.5'
var vers=navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")+8
var versionextension=navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")+10
var versionindex=navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")+12
if ((parseInt(navigator.userAgent.charAt(vers))==1)
&& (parseInt(navigator.userAgent.charAt(versionindex))==7))
I’ll break it down if you don’t want to read all of that. Any Firefox version other than 1.0.7 or 1.5 will get the “unsupported browser” dialog. Apparently the site hasn’t been touched after October 23rd, 2006, since Firefox 2.0 was released the following day.
I know I’m complaining about this a lot, but the fact of the matter is that most users of the web don’t know what a user-agent string is, much less how to change it. Some users may read the FAQ and choose an alternate browser; others may not read the FAQ at all. (I’m sure I’m in a very small segment of users who check out the source code). Regardless, it gives the impression that Firefox isn’t as compatible as other browsers out on the market, all because a web developer wasn’t very forward thinking when writing code.
I’ve tried to do the right thing and have e-mailed the webmaster; hopefully this issue will be resolved shortly, and there will be one less website where Windows users have to rely on Internet Explorer. 
Entries (RSS)
I don’t know what the hell you were just complaining about, but I got your back. Stupid non-changing user-agent string mother fuckers. They’d better hold their F8 keys when they wake up tomorrow morning and start the day off in safe mode, because anyone who writes crap code like that is just begging for a beat-down.
LoL. You don’t wear your FireFox shirt anymore? How will people know there’s important security updates. You were like the walking “live update”. I was thinking maybe Safari3 would push to make the web more compliant…but I don’t even use Safari on Mac. I’m actually using Camino, since it’s based on FF, it’s more compatible with most sites.
Opera is pretty awesome too, but it’s just that it not supported enough that it makes it panful to use (I rmr I used Opera, and when things didnt load, I would use FireFox, and then when that didnt work, I fired up IE).