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Citifi.com Denies Alternate Browser Access
Mr. Magoo writes "Citifi.com, CitiBank's new financial services portal, is the latest big web site non-Windows users can't access." When I view the site with Netscape under Windows, I get a marketing blurb that says 'Become a Citi f/i customer and enjoy the convenience of being able to bank, invest, and pay bills 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from any PC that's connected to the Internet.' Tried it with Netscape 4.05 and M12 under Linux, and I get no dice. Lynx 2.82rel.1+ssl under Linux seems okay, though. It seems we've got another poor-web-design victim.
So, the question is; How do we inform computer illiterate managers that the Web is a collaberative community of standards, rather than a dictatorship governed by high school bully tactics?
My indirect reply:
I have the doubtful good fortune of being one of the people whose job it is to translate between the wishes of managers and the work of development staff. I'm the one who either has to persuade the managers that what they said is a really bad idea and shouldn't be passed on, or I have to take that message and go to the developers and try to negotiate a solution that is both possible and accomplishes what they want.
I run into the situation that you're describing a lot-- particularly with cross-browser and standards issues-- and I've won a lot of those battles on the behalf of open (at least relatively open) standards-- but I think we need to look at how you're framing your question here.
Managers are illiterate about computers. Often about Internet. Very true. They do, however, understand their own business. You need to ask them to care about things like usability across multiple platforms and open standards because, and only because, it impacts their business. If you talk to them about community standards and collaboration and Internet history their eyes are going to glaze over and roll back in their heads. And why shouldn't they? Do you care about every issue in every field of every portion of life that impacts your core business? Would you stand around wanting to debate the relative merits of--oh, I don't know-- plastic formation methods just because your keyboard is made of plastic? No. (Unless you're hopelessly eclectic) You'd want to know what difference it makes to you and whether you should care about it in buying keyboards.
Managers are precisely the same. If you tell them that they should make their website accessible to all browsers because it isn't fair or violates good design standards or whatever, that's going to mean nothing to them. If you take the same situation and use arguments relating the issue to their website, however, that will (generally) sink in. For instance, I frequently discuss how unstable the browser market in general is and how features can differ from even one version of a browser to the next-- so some cool proprietary gimmick they want to use may not be implemented in the next. That leads to the inevitable question. "Surely there are safe features?" I then talk about standards and their purpose.
Generally there's a problem because they've got some home-grown genious working for them who learned how to build web pages with Front Page and couldn't write good code if his life depended on it and is in love with some plug-in dependent navigation element. He or the boss will object that it's 'too difficult' to write code that will work everywhere. I then will sit down with the manager and do the cost figures with them about what it would cost in time and manpower to do it properly now versus what it would cost them to redo completely should their mistakes this time make it necessary. That comparison generally hits home rather close to where it really hurts.
Above all, if you want to communicate good practice to management and non-IT people in general, be patient, try to understand their point of view of the matter, and don't assume they're stupid people just because they're stupid about computers.
Gee, this was really long...
Because the snark was a...
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We have been informed by Netscape and VeriSign? that the Digital Certificates** contained in Netscape Navigator? and Netscape? Communicator browsers with version numbers of 4.08 or below are about to expire. In order to maintain the highest level of security, many secure sites, require a current certificate when establishing a connection.
A browser upgrade to Netscape Navigator or Netscape Communicator 4.5 or higher, or conversion to Microsoft? Internet Explorer 4.01 or higher (Apple Macintosh? users must use version 4.5 or higher) will automatically update this certificate. If you do not upgrade to Netscape Navigator or Netscape Communicator 4.5 or higher, or convert to Microsoft Internet Explorer by December 31, 1999, you may no longer be able to connect to any secure site on the Internet, including Suretrade. We will not support earlier versions of these browsers after this date.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A YEAR 2000 ISSUE.
To ensure uninterrupted service to Suretrade and other secure web sites please follow the directions below.
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(instructions for upgrading followed....)
Netscape 4.05 is not compliant, and it's my understanding that Mozilla M12 doesn't yet have a valid digital security certificate authentication in place yet. I could be wrong.
I think this particular problem is someone getting all freaked out over nothing. Note that the Lynx connection with SSL works fine.
IS THIS REALLY POOR WEB DESIGN?
They should be refusing accounts from these soon-to-be-useless-to-connect-to-secure-sites browsers unless they want a whole bunch of tech support calls on or soon after Jan 1, 2000!
Hey guys, it looks like this problem is everywhere. My grandmother just put up a site to show her recipes for cookies that she gives to orphans. Not only that, the damn site doesn't support Netscape 2.x OR Quicken for Windows 3.11!
Dudes its time for some serious hacking. Get her.
I've also got some rumours of a Lisa Loeb fan page that won't let any small mouth bass view the site. That's only a rumour right now though, let's not get all worked up over nothing.
Hotnutz.com
Turn on cookies and go to www.citifi.com and you'll get the lame "We dont support anything but windows or macos, go away" message. Then click on "About Citifi" at the bottom, suddenly you get access to the navigation bar at the left, and the one at the top right, which offers you to check out their entire website, INCLUDING:
A Home link which takes you to their main page
A Products and Services page
A Signup to be come a new member page
And to even "sign in" to your account
(Direct Links not included because their site runs on https with cookies and it seems without seeing the "disclamer" that your OS isn't supported, it does not work.)
And more, it looks like you can navagate the ENTIRE page REGARDLESS that it says you're unsupported.
So the 64 thousand dollar question is.....
Why have the disclamer that non-Windows and non-MacOS users are unsupported if they can, even with the disclamer page, navigate the entire site?
-- iCEBaLM
Well, if the sites works for lynx, what's the problem?! It probably looks fine under Netscape and Mozilla too, if you can hack them so that they id themselves as lynx (HTTP_USER_AGENT or whatever). I hope we are not going to see a spate of stories like this: "www.so-and-so.com doesn't work on my browser". I mean, get used to it, people. This happens all the time. If we had a story about it on slashdot every time, there wouldn't be room for anything else. If you want to do something a bit more constructive than whining on slashdot, check out the Campaign for a Non-Browser Specific WWW. Then, write to the webmaster of offending sites, let them know they're fucking up, and point them at that page.
Sheesh, it drives me up the wall.
"Make sure our site ranks high on search engines. Make sure you repeat keywords in the meta tags." (Like they know what a META tag does) . . . How do you explain to somebody that it ain't that easy, and that repeating keywords kills your ranking?
"I don't like where that line breaks!" Like I can really have a lot of control over that. Say some user who has increased his font size comes along. The text breaks in some odd place for him.
"Make sure you test those CGI scripts on Windows and Macintosh!" Like the browser really affects the way the CGI script operates.
And, of course, as the guy mentioned, there is always the "You need to move faster!" When I'm trying to kick the bugs outta a script. Then, if I get rushed into putting the script into action without adequate debugging, it's my fault because it wasn't right before it went live.
Where does this all end? I don't know. I think that some of the stuff you can create with Shockwave/Director/Whatever is cool. Quicktime movies and RealAudio are neat. We can do neat stuff with the web that wasn't possible four years ago. But, we're losing sight of the original purpose of the internet -- to allow information to be accesible to lotsa folks in a platform-independent way. It's easy to ignore part of the population (those who use Lynx, those who use Linux, or even those who don't want to install Shockwave on their computer) since they may not make up a large percentage of the population, but that doesn't make it right. I know we'll never go back to that completely, but I just wish people would TRY to understand that before they go deciding what, why, when, and how they want their website to look and act.
Sorry, I know a lot of that was off-topic, but I've been steaming over some of it for a while, and this thread provided an opportunity to vent a bit.
People like you and I probably don't give a crap how it looks, as long as it works and the information is there, but computer illiterate managers only have the surface looks to judge by. Heck, when I was developing the code in the background I was accused of moving too slowly, but once I was working on the cute interface I was suddenly moving at a blistering pace - fact is I was working at the same quick speed the whole time.
Managers of companies appear to believe the world revolves around them. When I told one that a feature he wanted was not supported by the HTML standards he actually asked me to get them changed.
So, the question is; How do we inform computer illiterate managers that the Web is a collaberative community of standards, rather than a dictatorship governed by high school bully tactics?
Citi f/i currently supports Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0 running Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. It also supports Macintosh running Netscape Navigator only. If you need further assistance, please call 1-800-2-citifi.
It rendered differently using Netscape (I used both Netscape and Opera behind a junkbuster proxy that disables cookies and masquared my user agent to be Netscape 4.7 on 2.2.13). It looks like it used Javascript to block arbitray browsers.
As it's their website, it's their choice wether or not they allow people using things other than a certain browser and/or OS. I, however, don't see why they'd not allow any forms/SSL 128 capable browser to become a potential paying customer.
I do have one question, though. Are we, the Slashdot readers and contributors, going to become the "website design police" -- cracking down on any site that just plain doesn't have high standards and proper design? Let these companies go and block people out -- then politely email them to ask them why they don't want your money. This should raise eyebrows, and eductate over at the company's office. "You, IT guy, why are we blocking out paying customers? I know you can fix this, so please do." Why not setup a public forum, or a site of some kind to audit websites for people, free of charge? This would certainly kill a few bugs with one squish.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.