[thelist] browser upgrade campaign gone wrong

sasha spam at bittersweet2.com
Thu Jan 2 18:01:01 CST 2003


On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 17:26:57 -0500, aardvark <roselli at earthlink.net> wrote:

>
> i just love surfing google and seeing this as a site's summary:
>
> "[Excepting text-based browsers, you are using an out of date
> browser. This site will look better if you upgrade to a current
> browser ..."
>
> there's not a specific question i have, but i just want to remind
> people that the whole idea of telling people to get a specific
> browser, whether by the upgrade campaign or by "best viewed
> with" images, is not always the nicest thing to do...
>
> i recently converted the UA string in IE to be something quite
> arbitrary, and now i get to see all the broken scripts, Flash
> detection, and browser warnings that indicate someone may not be
> testing their code well enough...
>
> turns out the site i mention above had what i needed, but i didn't know
> until
> i surfed over there...
>
> on the very next search results page:
>
> "If you can read this, it means your browser can't display inline frames.
> Please upgrade."
>
>
> --
> Read the evolt.org case study
> Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself
> http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151035/evoltorg02-20
> ISBN: 1904151035

It never ceases to amaze me just how rude and ignorant certain designers
out there can be (or painfully obvious that they use some lame WYSIWYG to
generate their code).  I surf with Opera identifying as Opera with inline
frames disabled, along with Proxomitron with offsite images disabled.  The
whole inline frames deal is what gets me.  On occasions when it's not "You
need a newer browser to view this frame, go get the latest Internet
Explorer or Netscape", its "You need a newer browser to view this frame, go
get Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Opera".  I guess they forgot that Opera
users can disable inline frames.

--
sasha



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