Browser Detection
Dear websites like nintendo.com, bellmobility.com, and others,
I should first describe my situation. I am a Mac OSX user who, after extensive browser testing, decided to use Camino as my web-browser of choice. It renders websites like Firefox does, but as it was written native for the Mac operating system, it is much faster to load and use. Unfortunately, it is a “small” browser in that most browser detection scripts don’t recognize it. As a result, I get caught in the “unsupported browser” subroutines. This annoys me every single time.
Bell Mobility’s Browser Check
In reading through Bell Mobile’s information, I found these little gems,
* We monitor browser usage on a regular basis and support browsers that the significant majority of our customers and visitors use to surf bell.ca
* Should we detect a significant change in our customers’ browsers of choice, we’ll take the necessary steps to officially support the new browsers.
and
Unfortunately, bell.ca does not officially support the Mac browser and operating system combination. Currently, the overwhelming majority of bell.ca customers and visitors use Internet Explorer 7.0, Internet Explorer 6.0, Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 1.5 on a Windows XP operating system.
Basically I have just been told that the designers of this website couldn’t bother to make sure that my browsing experience would work. They don’t care because I am not in the “majority” of their users. Clearly it is my fault for using an unsupported browser and they are not going to do anything to solve the problem besides telling me up upgrade or deal with the consequences of a potentially faulty website. I see this as both a failure of the company and of the web authoring company that put it together.
Web development takes lots of money. On big websites like bellmobility, I’m sure it cost a great deal. Thus, a company wants to save money as much as possible and if that means not making sure the site works on the “unsupported” browsers, then sites are often willing to do that. The web developers simply code for W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards and leave it at that. This is not enough.
Ideally your website will be able to serve 100% of your users, regardless of 3rd party plugins (like flash), javascript (some people don’t enable it), physical limitations (like individuals who are blind), screen size (even if someone is using a 800 x 600 browser, they should see everything important immediately), and browser type (be it IE, Firefox, Safari, Camino, Shiira, Opera, Konqueror, or Lynx). Being able to fulfill this goal can be very difficult, but it should be of primary importance because in the end, what is the purpose of the web? Is it to be a place for big companies to tell you what to do or is it a place for every single person equally?
This year, Time Magazine’s choice for “Person of the Year” was “You.”
Link to the article on time.com
The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.
The point of bringing this up is that the web isn’t about you, big corporations. It isn’t about making a super flashy, astounding website. It is about individuals; people who are just trying to get from place to place and get the information they need. The easier this is done, the happier the end user will be. The more obstacles you throw in their way, the less likely they will return to your website and the more likely they will give you negative word-of-mouth publicity.
Ultimately, what does this all mean for a big company website in terms of browser checks (where this got started anyways)? Basically, there are several ways a company can deal with different kinds of browsers and operating systems.
- Keep track of all different rendering engines to make sure that your website works on them. By this I don’t mean browsers, I mean rendering engines. If it works on Firefox, it will work on Camino because they use the same engine. If it works on Safari, it will work on Shiira. If it works on IE, I’d be amazed (kidding). Check the rendering engine if you are going to check anything. The browser name does not matter.
-
Instead of redirecting people to a website where it says, “we can’t guarantee that this site will work with your weird browser so you can’t blame us if it messes up,” put a bar at the top of the website. It doesn’t have to be much, just something to let people know.
Original Home Page
Updated home page with notice bar at the top. I’m sure it is possible to make this look more elegant, but I was aiming for the idea rather than spending time on it.
- Just don’t worry about it. The people using browsers you can’t identify are generally doing so for a reason. I selected mine through testing and personal preference. We like what we chose, so let us be and they are prepared to deal with improperly loading websites as a result, even though the site really should work.
The more accessible the web is, the happier it will be. This doesn’t mean to go to the extremes of black text on white backgrounds or the like, nor that flash should never be used, just that websites should be designed with all the end users in mind, not just the highest ranking ones. Remember, just one annoyed or angry user can have a major impact. Keep that in mind next time you want to save money on a website.
