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Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari
babooo404 writes "Last week, Walmart launched their online video download service. Immediately there were posts that the service did not work with the Firefox or Safari browsers. There was a collective, "WTF" when this happened as this is 2007, not 1997. Now it appears that reports are out that Walmart has completely turned off the ability to get into the application at all by Firefox, Safari or any other browser it does not like."
Raises its ugly head. I can't tell you how many development groups I'd seen hobbled by outside politics vs real-world applications and logic. Sounds all conspiracy theoryish, but in the world of marketing, you can't get away from these things. Looks like Wall Mart got the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
A lot of people thought this would go the way of their last video offering. It now seems that they are dedicated to making it a failure. Too bad, the more competitors in the on-line video business, the better.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
I don't think it's that at all. WalMart is so profitable because it targets average middle America. Its niche happens to be precisely the vast bulk of people who don't know much about computers and stick with the default Internet Explorer. Because the company targets this niche so successful, it obviously would feel little need to ensure that its site works with the minority of users who use other browsers. It's not fear of hackers, it's just a desire to do as little work as possible.
In any event, should we really care about not being to shop online at Wal-Mart? Check out a report like Fishman's The Wal-Mart Effect (New York: Penguin, 2006) and you'll be convinced to take your business anywhere but there. At the same time you help Grandma install Firefox to beat the constant threat of spyware and adware installation, you might also want to do a good turn by doing some shopping for her at a locally-owned store...assuming you have any left.
Having a small-town business in my family, as well as most of my friend's families owning their own businesses, I agree with the get local first. And I haven't set foot inside a Walmart, much less bought from them, in over 3 years.
Except that every computer has IE installed. What is the average user going to do? Write walmart a nasty letter because firefox won't work on their site, or just click on the little blue "e" and copy the URL into internet explorer? You must remember that us techno-geeks don't make up a whole lot of marketshare. The average user is just going to use what works.
I got nothin'
the DRM software in version 10 is probably not included automagically in all regular windows xp sp2 installations, meaning that if you want to use the store with your dial-up modem (as many people would- not trying to troll here), you would have to first upgrade all your MS stuff via Windows update, probably not knowing to uncheck the windows genuine advantage box, and downloading and instaling that.
Some of the patches are great, some not so much. If I patch my computer over a 768kbps connection or lower and something breaks all because I wanted to use walmart's video store, I am a totally pissed off consumer.
One wonders if MS didn't have a hand in this...
That's why I always open install the 'open with IE' Add-On. Then when Grandma says that the site doesn't work, I can tell her that the site is broken, and might not be secured. I explain that she can get to it by clicking the open with ie button, but she should know that it might break her computer if she does. I explain the IE doesn't tell you when the site is broken or insecure. I then make a face, and tell her that ...Well... Walmart MIIGGGHHHT be safe, but that I'm surprised such a big store would have an insecure broken site. This has the following effects:
She doesn't immediately switch back to IE.
She places the blame for the broken site on the proper entity
She avoids sites that are IE only, as she perceives them as dangerous and broken
She can still go to the sites that are IE only if it is really important to her.
If it is a site that she is going to go to anyway, you can set the plug in to automatically load in IE, and grandma care for that site.
Living in a small town, I am glad I don't have to pay the extortion that small-town-businesses are prone to charge for ordinary daily items. The local hardware store charges like six times as much for some items than I pay for them at Lowes or WalMart.
Not this one.
When I do that with Firefox, with User Agent Switcher set to IE 6 on XP, I get a pretty amazing mess:
http://pipct.net/temp/malwart.gif
So their site also depends rather heavily on Javascript.