Neglecting Web Standards - An Example
August 07, 2008
Lately I have come up against a few systems that prove the point for web standards. The idea is that technology should be accessible to everyone regardless of your browser, operating system or anything else that may be different about their setup than “the normal”. It’s an important concept that has been talked about by far too many people to name individually, but since it hasn’t been completely realized it still means we need more information, more conversation about it.
However, this article is probably not going to shine much light on the matter. What it does is offer an example of why it’s so important to take different audiences into consideration. The whole mess began a few months ago when I tried to setup my new DSL connection.
The packaging came to our house with a step-by-step guide to get started. The instructions were written very clearly, however entirely for Windows. Upon inspection I found that the instructions for Mac were as follows:
- Plug in your DSL modem to the phone line
- Call our 1-800 number and talk to a technician for guidance.
At first I thought to myself, I’m capable of setting this up on my own, I wonder if I really need to call them. It came up to a screen indicating that I needed to enter some information since it was my first time using the service. I clicked the button to continue which led to an error screen reading:
“We’re sorry, the browser you are using is not supported by our system. Please use Internet Explorer instead.”
I thought to myself “I am using Safari at the moment, maybe I ought to try Firefox since it has been known as a cross platform internet browser.” And so I switched over and attempted to login. This time I was met with an activation error along with an alert from Firebug. Apparently the JavaScript that was supposed to be walking me through the page was failing miserably while the big blue logo mocked me for all the times I talked about it negatively.
So I called tech support to see what they had to say about the matter at hand, and I waited on hold for at least 30 minutes. When I finally got someone on the line they were cordial, and so I was polite back. It wasn’t his fault that he answered my call, no sense in making his life miserable. So we started talking through some options and these were suggestions his computer system was giving him to try:
- Activate the account using the activation page – already deemed impossible by me since I didn’t have Internet Explorer
- Convince the user (me) to open Internet Explorer and proceed happily
- Convince the user that their browser is wrong and that they must reset it to browser defaults. (That was Firefox, he assumed something was wrong with my JavaScript settings.)
- Open the Netscape browser and try that one. Luckily I had every browser I can get for Mac installed, except IE of course, that way they couldn’t say I needed to call back after acquiring a copy of Netscape.
There were a few times where he put me on hold to research the situation. I don’t blame the guy, he was just reading the tech support answers he was given… So he came back on the phone and told me that I really needed to get Internet Explorer on my Mac. I told him it wasn’t going to happen, that IE was made for Windows and not compatible with my PowerBook.
Now, I realize that some of you might remember the days when Mac actually came with Internet Explorer installed. The last edition that I know worked with Mac was IE 5, to my knowledge IE 6 was never available. But IE 5 is old, very old, 5ish or so years old. In fact, when I started using Apple products it was already old… So when I write that IE doesn’t work with Macs I’m referring to anything beyond IE 5. Oh, and likewise, I don’t have an Intel based Mac, so I can’t install Windows on my machine and run it from there. All those options are out.
He wanted to put me on hold again but I needed to get back to work, so I told him I’d call back later when I had more time to work on the problem. That’s when he left me with this suggestion.
Sir, I think you’re going to have to just download Internet Explorer for your computer, get it from somewhere, maybe see if your friend has a copy of it you could borrow.
I explained to him that it just wasn’t going to happen on that computer, that IE isn’t made for Mac and he was asking me to do something that just wasn’t possible. So I let him get back to helping others, he tried after-all…
I called back later in the evening and of course I heard more of the same answers “you need to install IE on your machine,” which is of course what the error message said… The second tech let me cut to the chase a little sooner, he didn’t make me go through a bunch of extra dialog at the beginning, he just took my word that I wasn’t crazy or an idiot and started reading in his manual. About an hour later I had finally exhausted all the ideas this tech had, which included the following:
- Install IE on my machine
- Try upgrading my browser to the latest editions of Firefox or Safari, which wouldn’t work if I needed to anyway since I can’t connect to the internet…
Those were the only subtle suggestions he had, the next one I thought deserved a quote. As I ended my conversation with him he added this idea:
“Maybe you could upgrade your computer from Macintosh to XP or Vista, then you could use Internet Explorer.”
I calmly explained that it was a different type of computer all-together, he still seemed to think I was crazy. I was using some weird and non-functioning “alien” technology after all… I went back and forth with him some more about this concept and eventually he left it alone.
He seemed surprised that I didn’t have access to a Windows machine at home and so I asked if I could set it up from the office. He jumped all over that option and told me that it was definitely what I should do. He was pretty sure that it would work, I was skeptical because why should it? If I were the security person I wouldn’t let someone authenticate that wasn’t even using my service.
So I left it alone and asked to speak with the manager. I wanted to tell the manager just how unhappy I was that in order to use the internet through this particular company that I would be forced to switch to a PC, just to authenticate. I was put on hold for awhile, probably 30 minutes and then I was told the supervisor would call me back in a bit.
I was starting to feel desperate, not wanting to go back to my previous ISP but not seeing a light at the end of this tunnel that didn’t involve a giant train with a Windows logo on it. So I drove to the office to try and authenticate from a Windows machine. First, I couldn’t get into the service. Each variation on the URL I needed to use resulted in some peculiar error that didn’t make sense. Eventually, however, I got to a plain error page, telling me some obscure error number and informing me I should call the 1-800 number. Just as I suspected, they weren’t going to let me authenticate from another internet connection.
So I did the unthinkable… I searched the web for Internet Explorer for Mac… and I found version 5.2.3. The last time I used IE for Mac was probably 2005, which is forever in browser time. So, I burned it to a CD and brought it to the house where I installed it. This screen made me laugh out loud and wish that there was a stronger option than simply “no.”
So I crossed my fingers and launched IE 5 which successfully took me to the same error page that instructed me to use Internet Explorer instead of whatever browser I was using.
I was pretty sure that it was dead, that I would be returning the equipment the next day and calling my old ISP to beg for a pardon or negotiate terms of surrender… But I had one last plan…
A little known fact about Opera is that it has the unique option of “Mask as Internet Explorer.” Since I had been attempting to use Opera before I needed to clear out the site cookies, but after that there weren’t any errors. Instead, I landed on a terms of service page. It was probably the most beautiful terms of service page I had ever seen, maybe I was just losing my mind at that point. Nevertheless I proceeded triumphantly through the interface until I came to this message:
“To continue installation you will need to download some software onto your computer. This software will allow you to connect to the internet through our service.”
Of course it was a Windows executable file that wasn’t going to even pretend to run on my Mac. So I left it on the screen and called technical support to begin my wait on hold.
As luck would have it the screen changed. At first I thought I was seeing things because typically when something is waiting on you to install a program it doesn’t just assume it has been completed. It changed to a screen indicating that I would need to download a second application and run it as well. Figuring there was a chance I waited a bit while the online installer pretended to wait for a response from my computer allowing it to proceed.
I launched Safari and found myself staring at this very website. Thanks to Opera I had overcome one of the most frustrating situations on the web, forced browser selection. I can’t guarantee that it will always work in every situation but at least it’s occasionally successful.
All things considered, it just goes to show that the choices we make as developers really do impact actual users. It’s for reasons like these that I completely support web standards. It’s not just an idealistic dream, it’s the way things should be.
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