Firefox users still blocked by some sites

50 million users can still be wrong

24 June 2005 13:52 GMT / By Kenneth Henry

In spite of the meteoric rise of Mozilla's Firefox (indeed your news is being brought to you with the browser) there are some sites which have designed and optimized around Internet Explorer and which doggedly refuse to allow anyone with Firefox, (or new Netscape or Opera) access to the same sites.

Web testing company SciVisum took Firefox on a surfing trip, looking at 100 well-known British websites. The Cinema chain Odeon's website had already been slated on previous surveys, and while they were busy counting Star Wars receipts, they clearly hadn't got around to making it accessible with Firefox.

Jobcentreplus.gov.uk was another high-profile site resisting cross-browser compatibility. Although British American Tobacco is another site which won't work, there is a slight element of whether you'd have any interest in looking at it, as you're hardly likely to find any tips on kicking the habit. The rest are listed below.

"Surprisingly, after all these years, users of standard-compliant browsers are still faced with sites that do not support their browser or with a link suggesting they download Internet Explorer," said Deri Jones, chief executive of SciVisum.

Clearly the thinking is to target the majority since everyone will have IE on their machines unless they're running Linux, and it's become an annoying but necessary chore to keep it updated as it's a favoured hacking target. While it's important for businesses to make their sites more compatible, the vast majority of people we knew went to the actual cinema to book Star Wars tickets for the very best seats - sometimes there's no substitute for physical presence, but it depends on the perceived importance of the event. Some people just wouldn't tolerate having a computer pick their seats or find their jobs anyway.

The main offending sites were as follows:

Odeon.co.uk
Jobcentreplus.gov.uk
Insurance.co.uk
British American Tobacco
Mansell.plc.uk
Companieshouse.gov.uk
Flybmi.com/cargo
bssuk.co.uk

Quote: BBC
List of Sites: SciVisum