One thing that's always irritated those who don't choose to use Internet Explorer is finding a website that requires IE. Such complaints seem to have grown all the more passionate now security concerns are driving more users to consider IE alternatives.
When a reader made a passing remark in
a recent story about not being able to register his product at 3Com's website because he was using a Macintosh, a number of readers chimed in. "I'll second this," wrote one reader. "The (3Com) product registration page doesn't work with Opera 7.5 or Firefox .8 on Windows 2000. As a longtime professional web developer, this is an utterly asinine and unnecessary design choice and just one more reason to avoid 3Com, which is too bad."
Readers noted some other pages where using browsers other than IE seemed to be a problem. "I was recently trying to buy air tickets with Cathay Pacific for my Mom," wrote one reader. "No, can't do, because I am not using IE. Anything else gets bumped out. I don't even get to see airline routes. I went to Singapore Airlines -- they did say (only) IE and Netscape, but they actually happily accepted Mozilla."
And, while it's perhaps not a big surprise, another reader recently wrote to say he was having trouble accessing some parts of Microsoft's site without IE. "Microsoft is trying to control what browsers people use access the Microsoft knowledge base," he wrote. "When using IE, clicking on 'Advanced Search' will bring you to the advanced search options page. When using Mozilla Firefox, clicking on this same link will bring you back to the basic knowledge base search page. So Microsoft is quietly hiding content and features from non-IE users of the knowledge base."
Since I use Firefox myself, I checked this reader's gripe when he first wrote me about it a few weeks ago. Sure enough, from Microsoft's "Search the Knowledge Base" page, I was unable to get to the advanced search page using Firefox. However, I checked again yesterday, and I can report this behavior has changed. Now with Firefox I can't even get to the basic knowledge base search page on Microsoft's site, much less the advanced one. Oh, well, maybe keeping its knowledge base safe from prying eyes is Microsoft's idea of heightened security.
What other websites have you seen that won't let you use your browser of choice? Write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com or post your comments here.
12:45:44 AM 
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