NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Mac community

If you want to know what the Mac Friendly section is all about, check out this page. You can also add provide information about your experiences by completing this form.

Recently Kim Walbridge, Manager Global Online Sales at Air New Zealand has been in touch about the "Poor" Mac Friendly rating the Air New Zealand website received in April of this year on the NZMac.com website. This rating wasn't simply a reaction to their site functionality, but more to a series of comments on the site (some of them even difficult to find) that confused Mac users and made it difficult to determine which browsers might work well or if the site was Mac Friendly at all. It's pleasing to report that based upon those comments, things have been improved.

Rating - Good

Note - Both the Air New Zealand and House of Travel ratings are likely to increase to 'Excellent' once users report on their experiences in using these sites.

The last time NZMac.com wrote about the site, the first activity carried out was to go to the "Browser Compatibility" link on the main page's footer. At the time, the comment was....

It's great to see such a link on the page although those not familiar with what a 'browser' is (and I do find that is the case when I say to people "Open your web browser") might find 'Technical support' a better title for this link?

This link remains and on reflection "Technical Support" would only be useful as a link if the site did more than the 'browser sniffing' (determining what web browser you are using) were to be conducted, so "Browser compatibility" seems mostly logical at this stage, although that is up for debate.

Once you click on the link, a pop-up window opens as before and it is interesting to note that on testing with Safari 3 (the latest version) even having pop-ups blocked did not stop this window opening. That's a good thing.

One of the initial criticisms last time was the statement that then appeared in the pop-up window, that said...

To view this website and book travel online, we recommend using a personal computer with screen size of 800 x 600 pixels or greater and Internet Explorer 5.5 or later running on Microsoft Windows. This website is not optimised for use with earlier versions of Internet Explorer or other browsers including those designed for handheld devices.

There was little or no indication of Mac support even when (on further investigation) Macs were supported. This was a key factor in the confusion that the site created and I'm pleased to report that this has now changed and the window states.....

If running a Windows operating system, we recommend browsing this website with Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. This website is not fully optimised for use with earlier versions of Internet Explorer or other browsers including those used with handheld devices.

If using Mac OS X we recommend Firefox for browsing this website and booking flights online. Please note some parts of this site are not fully optimised for use with browsers running on Apple operating systems.

See that? Are we OS X users mentioned? Is it clear? Absolutely!

This is exactly what Air New Zealand has worked on based on comments in this Mac Friendly section. Kim Walbridge, Manager Global Online Sales at Air New Zealand comments in the email...

"Your review of the airnewzealand.co.nz certainly helped us realise we needed to do a better job of communicating how our site is in fact optimised for customers using Macs. We have re-written the Browser Compatibility page, hopefully to be far less exclusionary and confusing for Mac users. Please note while we continue to recommend Firefox for OS X (due our current web testing programme), we do not ignore known issues with Safari, for example having addressed the calendar pop-up and other issue mentioned in the review. I would welcome any questions or observations you may have on Air New Zealand's support for Mac users"

Kim also goes on to provide a contact number and that is also a fantastic response to addressing issues and wanting feedback.

This is another example of a site being optimised for Firefox. Such a discussion took place in the review of the House of Travel website. It is not uncommon for the browser to be selected given that it is cross platform. It will be interesting to see if (with the release of Safari 3 for Windows) whether more sites will work towards providing compatibility with the Safari browser. At this stage however making sites compatible with a more widely used and cross-platform browser such as Firefox is common sense technically and also most likely easier to achieve. The lack of official Safari support therefore is not a direct criticism, but simply something that might just see sites never make it to the "Hall of Fame" rating until a later date.

In replying to Air New Zealand concerning the changes, I did comment that the following very important warning is still not visible within the pop-up....

"Using non-compatible browsers or operating systems to access this website may reduce site functionality. You can install or upgrade these browsers from the links below."

Below this comment (once you scroll) are links to the downloads for Internet Explorer and Firefox...but neither of these indicated what platforms they were for. It would seem obvious to list this to assist users.

I'm not a great fan of pop-up windows.....and even less of a fan on ones that then require scrolling. Many users will not realise (as strange as it sounds) that the presence of scroll bars indicates the ability to scroll for more information. This is because many malformed pop-up windows will display scroll bars but not have anything that is actually not shown. I would argue that it is less likely for someone to scroll in a pop-up window than not....so perhaps a statement that says "Scroll down for further technical information" that is visible on pop-up might be the answer?

Summing up

The response from Air New Zealand to the initial Mac Friendly rating has been positive and it is obvious that the comments have been taken on board and changes have been made. This is no simple or easy thing in a business and website such as Air New Zealand's. NZMac.com thanks them for getting in touch and for the work they have done so far to improve their site.

Their site is worthy of a "Good" rating at this stage and we may see this rating go up once we receive feedback from users. At the same time, in further discussion over recent days, it is clear that the Air New Zealand website is evolving constantly and that we're likely to see more changes to the site as time allows. From what I can gather, these changes should be as positive for Mac users as recent changes have been.