Slashdot Mirror
Online Banking And Browser Support
robbo writes "Earlier this week, The Register ran a piece on major UK banks and E-commerce sites' refusal to support alternative browsers for online banking, and they followed up with a list of saints and sinners. The reasons vary from requiring support for proprietary technology to security. My own bank only recently started supporting Netscape 6 (but they still don't support Mozilla). Clearly, support for Mozilla, Konqueror, or Galeon are absolutely necessary if projects like GNUCash can successfully integrate online banking. How does the Slashdot crowd find their banking support? Is your bank a sinner or a saint?"
2 years ago Wells Fargo had an issue with the latest Netscape, but aside from that they've supported every Mozilla I've ever used.
Sig!
Kudos to Nationwide (UK Building Society), whose online banking site I've successfully used with Mozilla and Konqueror (3.0) as well as IE. Everything seems to work as it should.
To be fair, it's probably not the Banks etc that set the terms to limit the browsers that access their sites. It's lazy developers, which are almost certainly web-dev companies trying to complete a project that they've managed to land by bidding low.
;-)
I've been guilty of it in the past - having to rush out a project, and not taking the time to test on every browser across every platform. The "IE only" disclaimer is an excuse for the most part.
It's worth complaining to the company though, especially if you mention they're being ridiculed on a number of extremely popular tech news sites
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Wamu is great as far as cross-browser support. I only have two complaints:
1) They block ICMP requests. Before I fixed my firewall (forcing the MTU), I couldn't get to the site.
2) Javascript that sets focus to the Username field *after* the page finishes loading (onLoad()). If you're already typing the password at this point, you look up, and just typed it (viewable) in the Username box.
Oh, make that 3 complaints:
3) It's far from realtime...
Other than these minor issues, I have never had a problem with any SSL-capable browser on any platform (even the HTML/CSS/tables all line up correctly).
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I cancelled my Capital One card over their refusal to allow Mozilla. Spoofing the UA header doesn't work, as they obtain this via Javascript (which must be enabled). Moz doesn't (yet?) let you override the UA that javascript returns...
I've emailed Cap One many times, and even tried to explain to the Phone Monkey when I cancelled the card why I was cancelling. Unfortunately, this person understood none of what I was saying...
Of course I've also emailed Flipdog.com, VistaPrint.com, and other sites over issues like this. Pisses me off, and I do hope AOL one day ships a Gecko/Mozilla-based browser for this reason...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Things will only change if you actually do something about it. I *always* complain if I have the time, I will mail the webmaster and point out that there is an HTML standard, point them at a dodgy validation of their site via validator.w3.org, and point out that they lose money, one way or another.
So get off your ass, knock up a form letter, keep it handy, and complain!
The future is partly in your hands.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
According to the same article, Chase Manhattan's online web client has serious problems with stability, security and breaches of privacy as well as a severe lack of open standards at almost every level of the implementation.
Having used it, I can vouch that this is true. The GUI is exclusively ActiveX, which works only on some versions of IE. I have to assume there is some windows web/db system driving the backend, at least in front of the mainframe (or whatever is holding the real bank records).
And it seems this is rather common among bank clients, even among smaller banks and credit unions. On three bank sites I looked at recently, two explicitly stated that IE was necessary, and on the third it was implied.
What about Opera masquerading as IE or netscape?
Capital One determines the browser using JavaScript, not the UA header. Unfortunately overriding the UA string does not override what JavaScript returns. And the site of course doesn't work at all w/o JS...
It was enough to cancel my card...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
And I use Royal Bank.. their site supports everything I've tried. I was so amazed I sent their tech support an email about how great it was to be able to use Konqueror to do my banking.
Might be useful: user-agent masquerading in a simple to use toolbar for mozilla
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I have to add kudos to NetBank too. MSIE6 works fine (duh!) and so does IE for the Mac along with OmniWeb. No support for Lynx though.
When I repatriated last year, retail banks didn't want my account due to a lack of banking history. NetBank was fast, efficient, and gives great rates.
My only complaint is that you cannot see deposit advices ahead of time, which is something my company does. Must be a batch system in the back for transaction history.
"Can you explain to me exactly which advanced functionality your bank need to use to make their site work that hasn't been there since HTML 1.0?"
Have you not read the HTML standards? HTML 1.0 didn't support anything but basic hyperlinking and the <PRE> tag. See here for more details. HTML 1.0 didn't support tables, forms, frames, etc. (Warning: Link is extremely dated.)
As I said earlier, I code my pages to the XHTML 1.0 standard. That means that Netscape 4.x won't render them properly, as Netscape 4 relies on a number of non-standard HTML tags and attributes (marginwidth, marginheight, height, etc.) In fact, Netscape 4 is so buggy when it comes to CSS that there are whole pages dedicated to its bugginess. (Search Google for more.)
Moral of the story: Code your pages to standards, and make sure they work in IE 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0. Beyond that, it's up to each individual web developer.
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"What about Opera masquerading as IE or netscape?"
:)
It doesn't really work. US Bank pulled a similar stunt with regard to their browsers. I had to use IE to get into my account, and that bothered me.
Here is what I did: I sent them a polite e-mail explaining that I work between Linux and Windows and the common browser (I use) between them is Opera. It is a well respected browser and I find it a bit painful to move to another browser just to use their site. They sent me an e-mail back saying they were getting a lot of requests like that and that they were looking into fixing it.
And they did. I can now use Opera at US Bank and all I get is a warning saying "this isn't a recommended browser, so it's yo fault." Heh.
So my advice to anybody who wants to contact their bank about this: Be polite. Don't make it sound like it's the end of the world. Don't make it sound like they're evil or stupid. Just politely explain your situation. You may or may not change any minds anywhere, but I guarantee you that if you get shitty with them you won't be heard.
Ditto here, had SFNB, they were great, but then RBC wanted outrageous fees, even charging me not only the now-extra monthly fee merely to have an account, but an extra monthly fee (I think $12 or so!) to pay bills online. I oculd not believe that they would charge me $12 to NOT write paper checks. Found Netbank and have been 90% happy ever since. I do wish they would send email status updates of received snail mail deposits (received, cleared).
Infuriate left and right
Try US Bank. I haven't interacted with a real person to deal with my accounts for months. My checking is the only account with ATM access.
I don't have a morgage yet, so the only important non-transfer transaction is the purchase of CD's for me. I generally do this from whoever has the best interest rate at the time of purchase, and don't worry about them till it's time to cash.
When I get a morgage I imagine I will set up an automatic bill pay in order to pay it off inside of 10 years or so, which would require no interaction from me after I set it up.
In short, being able to pay my credit card every few days from either banking account while rebalancing my checkbook does simplify the finances quite a bit, in fact I can't imagine doing them any other way again.
I live in a giant bucket.