triskellian

*boggles* with you.

I'm a confirmed PC user (not averse to Macs but I haven't used one since 2000) and I never use IE. Or Firefox. This apparently makes me an oppressed minority, but I don't care. :D

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knirirr.livejournal.com

Do you mind if I ask who is responsible for this?
As you might guess, I have encountered it quite a bit in the past, having used both operating systems and browsers that are unfamiliar to most people.

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triskellian

NUS extra. If I want an NUS card, which I'm entitled to have, I must use IE.

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They don't actually issue physical cards in the SU any more? Bwuh?

/me used to enjoy that job. :(

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taimatsu

They do, but you have to register your info with the NUS website first (AIUI).

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chrisvenus

Seems to work fine on my firefox on PC. So they sound to me like they don't even know what they support. :)

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triskellian

Yep, and my colleague has just told me that she successfully used it with Safari on a Mac (several years older than mine), so they clearly have no clue at all.

(FTR, it's not the site as a whole which is broken, but the bit of ordering a card which requires either photo upload or access to a webcam. I do have access to PCs, of course, but the computer which has both a camera and all of my existing photos is a Mac.)

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chrisvenus

I did head into that area and click around a bit but didn't have a webcam so didn't try that. I certainyl got as far as being able to choose to upload one of my own and then got bored. Ah well. :)

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waistcoatmark.livejournal.com

from what I remember the kind of people that used to get involved in student politics, I'm surprised that they managed to both read and respond to your email, much less understand something as technical as browser standards

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lanfykins.livejournal.com

<boggles with you>

'So what was the particular piece of website design that was worth giving up the revenue of a third of the web-using world?'

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lanfykins.livejournal.com

Browser use statistics

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triskellian

Thank you. Too brain-fogged to find that page, but that's exactly what I shall use to respond.

(It was NUS extra.)

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That's not how it works, though.

Just because 30% of people use non-IE for preference, doesn't mean they aren't prepared to fire up IE where necessary. You might as well argue that because people spend upwards of 90% of their time not in a car, out of town shopping centres are giving up 90% of their potential custom. They aren't, they're giving up the proportion which doesn't have a car at all. And they don't care.

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Also, from that page you cite:

"Statistics are important information."

Ahahahaha. And other such hysterical laughter. And so to bed.

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I do not share your boggle.

There are a lot of people in the world. Like, really a lot. Only a tiny, weeny and frankly negligible proportion of those people have any kind of technical clue at all.

There are still people who write cheques in supermarkets. Same goes for pretty much any other deprecated behaviour. Even things which are wasteful, dangerous or evil.

Websites? No, I don't expect them to be well designed. In fact I'm still pretty happy when the website I need turns out to exist!

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I doubt there are that many who still write cheques in supermarkets, because they're phasing out taking them everywhere useful. Boots & Argos stopped ages ago (yes, I know they're not supermarkets). Tesco no longer take them, nor do Sainsbury's and Asda. Waitrose and M&S will probably remain cheque-writing-enclaves for a while (demographics) but will eventually cave too.

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Yep. And do you know why they phase them out?

Because otherwise people would carry on using them!

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Heh, but no. They phased them out because practically no one was using them (2 in 1,000, at best). It cost too much money to process them at the admin office/banking stage, not because it was difficult at the checkouts. Next time you're stuck behind someone writing a cheque for their food shopping a) consider shopping somewhere cheaper *g* and b) marvel at the endangered species you're witnessing...

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Perhaps we should recommend

triskellian to marvel at this website she's found? ;-)

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I don't think she'd necessarily appreciate the suggestion. Although I have previously found that an "isn't that marvellous?" reaction to utter stupidity in the workplace, while not actually solving the problem any more than rage would, does wonders for my blood pressure, so maybe a little Pollyanna-ism is useful on occasion.

Anyhoo, ~330 in 1000 is somewhat more impressive than 2 in 1000, if the estimate above is to be believed. A company that voluntarily cuts out 1/3 of its potential customer base has some cojones, if nothing else.

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<bogus comparison alarm>

Nononono! You have become confooozed!

The company's customers are not the 2 in 1000 (where did that figure come from?), it's the company itself. Or more precisely, their website.

The company has cut 1/3 of their potential customer base not because they want to, but because they lack the competence, understanding and general cluefulness to do otherwise. Most likely their website was Nice And Cheap (TM) and they have no intention of shelling out for a new one.

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2 in 1000 - people who used cheques in supermarkets before they were banned. Do keep up, old boy. :)

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<rolleyes>

Yes. Thanks. Where did the figure come from?

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According to Boots, cheques currently account for just two purchases in every 1,000 of its stores, yet cause it the most problems and many similar but better-worded sentences in press releases from all the companies who have stopped taking them. Money Saving Expert (which I just typed as Monet Saving Expert, a more specialised site no doubt) has dozens of the things quoted and archived.

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Monet Saving Expert

Superb! :-D

(The quote you have dates from 2006 and in fact is not typical, with cheques accounting for 6% of retail spending at that point.)

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*nod* It was the first hit in Google; I knew the stat from a August 2007 press release, one of a dozen or so lying around in my office when I was writing a piece about cheques two weeks ago. It's a bit tricky to point you at a good internet-available source equal to "the managers of eight stores in the shopping centre where I work (about 2 minutes from

triskellian's house)", however. :)

Edited Date: 2007-11-16 11:18 am (UTC)

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Although really your source is better in a lot of ways, since it's based directly on real world data. Google, like Wikipedia, is a great place to go for data provided you don't need to trust it.

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This is part of my (mild) beef with Wikipedia and its insistence on sources - stuff you can see on dvd any time you like doesn't count as a primary source (according to rows-gone-by about pages on certain tv shows) but some awful webpage knocked up badly by a half-hearted PR company wonk who never saw the show does?

Blargh. Anyway, now I know

triskellian was talking about the NUS I'm not in the least surprised at their attitude to web presence. >:-{

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You misunderstand the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to perform a number of related Google searches around a particular topic and summarise the first page of results, then add a bunch of random uninformed opinion. A source counts if (and only if) it can be linked to from the article. You'll note that while there are NPOV and verifiability criteria for Wikipedia, there is no truth criterion.

Now that Wikipedia occupies on average 8.2 of the top 10 results of any
Google search, contributing has become much faster, so they've started to really rack up the article count in the last couple of years.

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Also, Wikipedia doesn't want you to use primary sources, it wants you to use secondary sources (see "No Original Research").

Not that I'd personally argue that watching a DVD is research, or that the rule doesn't have a lot of perverse results. But I sort of see the point of it, in that there are certain kinds of bad behaviour that it prohibits.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia can't have a rule "No Original Research, unless it's something that any fool could reproduce for himself, use your common sense", for reasons which become rapidly obvious if you ever try to follow VfD for a week.

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chrisvenus

If they just had a crap website that would be one thing. The fact is they ahve a crap website, they know they have a crap website and they don't seem to care. I think that is the boggle thing. It is really easy to make stuff that breaks on some browsers when you use complicated javascript or even style stuff. You're right that's not boggle worthy. WHat's boggle worthy is the fact they don't care, surely? That isn't anything to do with technical clue I'd have thought.

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wimble.livejournal.com

Even better: "Our website is not compatible with the web-browser you are using".

Yes, but only because you've put in a bit of web-browser detection code. I've downloaded (with IE) the pages that you're generating, and they behave absolutely fine in my browser. Could you stop redirecting me to the incompatible warning page, and just let me take my own risks on your site?

Thank you.
Me.

(Yes, I really did get on the phone to some website the OED was using for research, and complain to them. They didn't seem to comprehend that we couldn't run IE on Sun workstations...)

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ar-gemlad.livejournal.com

"Unfortunately, we may be breaking the law. We may have heard of accessibility, the DDA and SENDA, but we decided not to give a monkey's arse."

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They may be, but personally I think it's a low tactic to use DDA as an excuse for why somebody should support Firefox on Mac (or on PC, for that matter).

Using a Mac is not (yet) a recognised disability.

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ar-gemlad.livejournal.com

No, but if their site doesn't work on X browser, you can bet your last biscuit it won't work with screen readers, CSS over-ride stylesheets, etc etc.

It might be a low tactic, but a site not working on Firefox is inconvenient; a site not working on a screen reader is potentially illegal.

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