We are looking to buy another radio at home. Since we moved house the existing hi-fi tuner, and worldband radio don't cover the house and garden properly. So we're on the hunt for another radio, preferably one with long-wave, so my better-half can listen to French radio, and because we can't get FM properly, so it's the only way to get BBC R4 - (actually not true, but for all practical purposes it is at the moment).
So on Sunday morning I tried to check things out. The UK catalogue retailer Argos told me I couldn't use their site as they only worked with IE4+ and Netscape 4.x. As it happens Opera works quite well when you lie about the browser type - so I don't know what they are talking about. If you try Mozilla then you get a rude message, and that's it - they clearly don't want my money.
My Internet bank is the same, they are obsessed with forcing you to use IE, even when the older versions, are very broken and I think unsupported by MS, yet they are unwilling to support a modern and reliable browser like Mozilla or Opera.
I know people gripe about Amazon, but they don't use frames, much JavaScript, no DHTML, virtually no style, and while the site could be described as dull, it works quite well with Opera or Mozilla, and they are happy to take my money, even if I don't use IE.
As for the radio, I'd like to get a nice Roberts radio, but I think I won't be getting it from Argos.
UPDATE Found the UA Tool which allows Mozilla to spoof other browsers like Opera does. It doesn't add to browser stability, 1.1 with tabs, Java and the tool is very wobbly on NT, but it seems to work, I shall see how it goes. For the curious, Argos's web site seems to work okay with Mozilla.....
Another personal irritation is the number of websites that use broken javascript (I've broken Guiness and Argos' sites before now). I get the impression they've bought sites from a webshop that knows how to design for IE, and have learnt programming from some very bad books.
I know I've designed web sites that I'm not proud of any more, but I don't ever recall telling people "use Browser X, at Y by Z resolution, in foo colours, otherwise p*ss off".
I know I've said things like, "if you use a modern browser, things will look at their best, but it should work well with any browser, otherwise let me know."
The average high street shop doesn't have signs up as "only crisp new bank notes accepted", or "only shop here if your wallet is blue". Okay, most shops don't take foreign money, or cheques without some form of guarantee, there is reasonable and then there is silly.
Most often they are MS only design shops, designing for IE4, with ancient browser sniffers, that don't know what to do with modern browsers. On the whole I've found Mozilla and IE6 (in standards mode) to be closer to each other in functionality, than either are to their series 4 versions...
I'm not anti-design, but poorly written hard-coded cruft, relying on browser defects is the road to ruin......
