Usable or useless
The Register has drawn up a list of how major UK banks and shops cope with non-Internet Explorer browsers. Makes for drepressing, if not totally surprising reading. Among the worst offenders were Marks & Spencer (doesn’t like Mozilla or Opera), Nat West (only supports IE, Netscape 4) and Scottish Power (even prevents Linux users accessing information about what to do in an emergency). Of the praise-worthy sites, Lloyds TSB bank came out best, being Linux-friendly. (For an international take on things, have a look at the Viewable with Any Browser campaign site.)
A few of the sites try to justify their IE-only stance as being security related. But come on, if we’re talking secure web browsers, Internet Explorer for Windows hardly comes top of the list! As of November 1st, there were currently 31 unpatched Internet Explorer security holes — unlike Opera or Mozilla (101 things that Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot is worth reading too).
I’m sorry, but it just comes down to companies being lazy and not developing sites to current World Wide Web Consortium standards. Surely, if you’re going to spend millions on a web site that you hope will generate a lot of revenue, it’s common (business) sense to make it accessible, usable and compatible. And a site that complies with current HTML, CSS and ECMA (a.k.a. Javascript) standards will work with almost all current browsers and operating systems, and future ones too. Digital Web Magazine has just published a good article on the Accountability of Accessibility and Usability for businesses.
Seems to me that more web designers and developers need to visit the The Web Standards Project site, or this great rant about clueless web sites. Sadly, a new report has found that the UK Government’s web sites are pretty awful too.
On an unrelated note, for some nice experiments with motion and interaction using Flash, check out Uncontrol. What I thought was particularly interesting was the ‘breadcrumb trail’ used for highlighting one’s path through the various pages.
- Someone finally notices what Bill is up to…
- Venting spleen at the script kiddies
