- Joined
- Dec 8, 2009
- Messages
- 453
- Reaction score
- 10
- Points
- 18
- Location
- The same as Sheldon Cooper - East Texas
- Your Mac's Specs
- iMac 2014 i5 5k 32gb 1tb fusion, second TB display, 2014 MBA
I had offered to help a woman register at the local junior college from her own computer, rather than going on campus and using one in the student center - a parking issue, not any dislike of the facilities. So far she had been unable to do so.
I soon found why. She has a cheapo Win PC, of course, but I took my Air. Went to the web site and instantly got an “Unsupported Browser Message. Along the lines of “Unsupported browser version. Safari version 6.4.2 required.”
Cranking up her machine, the message was “Unsupported browser version, the one of the following versions is required.”
Internet Explorer 6.0.SP3
Internet Explorer 7.0.5002
Internet Explorer 8.0.6603
(I’m making the version minor numbers up - I didn’t memorize them.
In other words, the programmers hard coded the website to a particular browser version(s).
Now this is not a small rural school. For a junior college it is very large (and so are my taxes for support) and has been around for a century. It has a vast IT department and fast wifi all over the campus. The internet service is very fast and with no filters - only your student ID is needed. Lots of companies would wish their IT was as professional.
So. WTH?
I got her registered by spoofing the browser version, then started to try to find out the idiocy of requiring browser versions that probably can’t be found. First, it was not done locally - it was farmed out to a company specializing in college front ends.
Email to the company about the fact that I had no way of downloading Safari 6.4.2 and it probably wouldn’t run on my machine if I did and anyway, Apple does not allow older versions of software to be loaded on top of newer.
Of course, the first message I got back was canned, and talked about the company’s extreme concern about making the user experience as wonderful as possible, and the necessity of security (with I.E. 6 ???) and such rot.
Next, I sent an email with pseudo legal stuff about locking out financially challenged (read, poor) students who can’t just buy a particular PC to get a single version of a browser - that would be replaced on the first update - and did they really want to help rich kids get ahead of the pack? That got a real email from a real person, but to the point that “We give the college what they want. You don’t like it, take it up with them.”
Since my student days are far in my past, I didn’t really want to get in a fight with the Registrar over something that did not concern me directly, so I dropped it.
But I am still astounded at the idiocy of hard coding to a browser minor release.
I soon found why. She has a cheapo Win PC, of course, but I took my Air. Went to the web site and instantly got an “Unsupported Browser Message. Along the lines of “Unsupported browser version. Safari version 6.4.2 required.”
Cranking up her machine, the message was “Unsupported browser version, the one of the following versions is required.”
Internet Explorer 6.0.SP3
Internet Explorer 7.0.5002
Internet Explorer 8.0.6603
(I’m making the version minor numbers up - I didn’t memorize them.
In other words, the programmers hard coded the website to a particular browser version(s).
Now this is not a small rural school. For a junior college it is very large (and so are my taxes for support) and has been around for a century. It has a vast IT department and fast wifi all over the campus. The internet service is very fast and with no filters - only your student ID is needed. Lots of companies would wish their IT was as professional.
So. WTH?
I got her registered by spoofing the browser version, then started to try to find out the idiocy of requiring browser versions that probably can’t be found. First, it was not done locally - it was farmed out to a company specializing in college front ends.
Email to the company about the fact that I had no way of downloading Safari 6.4.2 and it probably wouldn’t run on my machine if I did and anyway, Apple does not allow older versions of software to be loaded on top of newer.
Of course, the first message I got back was canned, and talked about the company’s extreme concern about making the user experience as wonderful as possible, and the necessity of security (with I.E. 6 ???) and such rot.
Next, I sent an email with pseudo legal stuff about locking out financially challenged (read, poor) students who can’t just buy a particular PC to get a single version of a browser - that would be replaced on the first update - and did they really want to help rich kids get ahead of the pack? That got a real email from a real person, but to the point that “We give the college what they want. You don’t like it, take it up with them.”
Since my student days are far in my past, I didn’t really want to get in a fight with the Registrar over something that did not concern me directly, so I dropped it.
But I am still astounded at the idiocy of hard coding to a browser minor release.
