[Am-info] Yahoo! SBC DSL forces Mac users to browse with Internet Explorer

[Mitch Stone]

Thanks, but I'm not personally effected. The question is why Yahoo 
would require MSIE for registering for this service, or at least say 
they do. Oddly, people who click through the warning screen are not 
prevented from continuing with a non-approved browser, and IE isn't 
required to actually use the service, just (ostensibly) to enlist. I 
suspect this is mainly an artifact of lazy web programmers at work, but 
no less annoying for it.

I had a similar experience with an e-tailer last week. The secure 
payment form insisted that I had cookie acceptance turned off and 
refused to process my order (why they require cookie acceptance for 
this is beyond me, but not the point). In fact the site wasn't checking 
for cookie acceptance, but browser flavor and version -- you needed to 
be talking to them with the latest versions of either IE or Navigator.

This artificial barrier forced me to fire up MSIE to complete the order 
(and reminded me what an awful piece of work it truly is). I included a 
comment about this on my order -- and much to my surprise, they wrote 
back saying they'd refer the issue to their programmers. The 
programmers will probably say, "Feh! Why should we lift a finger to 
help people who use minority web browsers?", but at least I can say I 
tried. Most people would probably just assume that their browser was 
broken, not the web site, and another default Microsoft customer would 
be born.

On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 09:11 PM, Sujal Shah wrote:

>
> Not to sound like a commercial, but Speakeasy is your friend if 
> they're available in your area (which they should be around you, Mitch 
> :) ).

   -----------
   Mitch Stone
   mitch@accidentalexpert.com

   In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and
   the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.
   -- Groucho Marx