UK Government Locks Out Non-MS Browsers

Joel Rowbottom writes: "The UK government's new gateway.gov.uk site, which is being trumpeted in advance of the forthcoming General Election, has been revealed to only work on Microsoft browsers under Windows - meaning you must use IE5.01 or above to be able to access government content, or do your tax returns online: no MacOS, no Netscape, and certainly no Linux. Who can have developed this site for the government? It's Microsoft of course, on their .NET platform! There's a Register article about it, but for a more extensive look LinuxUser magazine in the UK have written a article on it which is available as PDF here."

Comments

This won't happen in the US ...

[Masem]

At least, if it is happening from US gov't sites after June 25, 2001, you can sue them. Thanks to Section 508, any federal web site that is publically accessible must meet many guidelines, including access for disabled people; the divisions whose sites are not compliant by this point without sufficient reason to not be compliant can be sued by the public or have displinary action taken by other parts of the gov't. This includes not locking out browsers (including text-based ones).

....might want to read the actual article...

[AugstWest]

This may however have been an early design feature that has now been edited out; we checked it with Netscape 6 on Windows, and got in without trouble. But we've also heard from people who couldn't get in with 6, and earlier versions of Netscape, Opera (even 5.11 pretending to be IE) don't work. We've got one Mac user saying he got in with IE 5 - we don't know how either.

It's not a big, public launch, and like any launch of a web-based product, you're going to see browser incompatibilities. If my company could get back every dime spent on dealing with the differences between IE and Netscape, we'd be in a hell of a lot better market position.

If MS somehow tries to maintain that it will always require Windows/IE, then you've got a problem. But this, this is nothing yet.

Re:Those bloody brits

[grammar nazi]

I tried to register and here's what it said...

To protect taxpayers' information whilst it is being sent to us, we are using the strongest available level of security. This is known as 128-bit encryption.

The browser that you are using does not appear to support this level of security. If you are sure that your browser supports 128-bit encryption, click here to enter the service.

If you are not sure whether your browser supports 128-bit encryption, could you please upgrade it by visiting the Netscape or Microsoft web site and downloading the necessary software.

Both of the browsers are links to the respective websites. The URL is http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/e-tax/checkbrw.htm if you don't believe me. This is one of the UK government sites.

Use Opera

[Kiro]

The poster missed the fact that you can still use Opera for that website, as long as you set it to identify itself as MSIE5.

--
Kiro

Opera on gateway.gov.uk

[The Monster]

I didn't have a problem accessing it with Netscape 6.

I just tried it with Opera 5.11, and got a message saying

We have made the Government Gateway compatible with as many browsers as possible, on both PCs and Macintoshes. However, because we need to maintain maximum security on this web site, we cannot support older versions of browsers. To use the Government Gateway, you must have:

• a PC, with Windows 95 or later, or Windows NT 4.0 or later with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.01 or later or Netscape Navigator version 4.08 or later
  
• OR an Apple Macintosh with Mac OS version 7.5 or later with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.0 or later or Netscape Navigator version 4.xx or later
• a working Internet connection
• the 128-bit security add-in, for your version of the browser

Please note that you cannot currently use Netscape 6 to access the Government Gateway, due to issues with the support for digital certificates in this new version.

Then I told Opera to identify itself as MSIE 5.0, and still got the message. Still no luck. I've got all the scripting turned on they ask for. Dammit. Somebody vote these guys out!

Let's be honest...

[Migelikor1]

Right now, we're looking at an early roll-out of a sophisticated service that has incompatibility problems with some of the enormous range of computers out there. Of course Microsoft made sure it was most compatible with their software first. Nobody should be surprised that the M$ programmers did a better job with their own product. Despite the usual sentiment that they're forcing conversion, there really hasn't been any reason to call foul yet. There should be wider support with time, and let's keep in mind that the Government isn't forcing citizens to use the service. Most people use IE anyway (let's face it...there aren't too many options) and the government, with Microsoft's help, and a minimum of expense, has just begun to offer an extremely nice service to those people. Maybe they should have written their own client, which was non-platform reliant, but they managed to release the service earlier and cheaper by using preexisting technology and cutting out a fairly small (though vocal) segment of computer users.