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27 September 2007
Posted in
Booking, Survey and Govt
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.
The House of Travel website's inability to cater for the Safari web browser has led to one user of NZMac.com to express their frustration in a Mac Friendly submission. This comes after the user (Ron Mayes) had email communications with staff at HoT and it was suggested that the use of Firefox was more appropriate. Out of courtesy NZMac.com has also had discussions with both parties to look at the issues. In the end, whilst the lack of Safari support may seem frustrating, the efforts that HoT have gone to ensure Mac users are not completely excluded from the site sees them rated "Good" in terms of how Mac Friendly their site is.
Rating - Good
Ron mentions that the site can no longer be used with Safari 3 and that extensive email contact with House of Travel's General Manager Online failed to resolve this issue. He comments...
"As the House of Travel website is an extremely useful one for airline bookings as it offers comparisons between all airlines, I am very disappointed that they have not at least put a warning on the site that Macintosh users who use Safari are not able to book online with them."
The lack of warning is an interesting point and perhaps HoT might explore the possibility of scripting that determines the browser viewing the site (often referred to as 'browser sniffing') and that provides some sort of warning, although this may not have to occur directly on the main page. Browser sniffing is common and often avoids greater frustration by users at a later time. The Air New Zealand site in fact does this when you go to their help section, indicating the type of browser that you are using, whilst also indicating if it is a supported type.
Speaking of Air New Zealand, when HoT commented to Ron that the Air New Zealand website didn't support Safari either, Ron commented to NZMac.com...
"This is incorrect as the Air NZ site works perfectly for me in Safari"
In fact in this instance, both HoT and Ron are correct in what they are saying. Go to the the main page of the Air New Zealand website and click the "Browser Compatibility" button at the bottom and they too suggest using Firefox. Air New Zealand's wording is less specific than HoT's "Safari is not yet optimised" comment, however regardless of the fact that the Air New Zealand site appears to work successfully with Safari, it is wrong to suggest it is a supported browser. It's great that Safari works for Ron, but that could best be seen as a bonus as opposed to specific work conducted by Air NZ.
Philip Roy comments....
I can appreciate Ron's frustration at having to use a second web browser in order to be able to use the House of Travel website. Unfortunately, the reality is that at times, there are sites that don't work for all browsers on both the PC and Mac.
Whilst from the Mac perspective it is easy to see Safari as the browser of choice (around 38% of users to this site use it as opposed to around 27% using Firefox), the reality is in the world wide web, Safari usage is very low.
At this point, it is also worth reminding us of part of the introductory text on the Mac Friendly section...
But let's be realistic. As a community, we aren't a huge group. We're not asking for attention above and beyond those that take the more traditional approach. We are however asking for recognition and common sense...including common sense systems that don't shut people out. We're also wanting to praise those that make the extra effort to acknowledge the Mac community and ensure their systems work for us. It is those groups that will reach the NZMac.com 'Hall of Fame'.
Ron is obviously frustrated at the issue, but I have to say I don't share as much frustration. I say this as someone with nine web browsers installed. These are installed so that I can check on sites as I develop them (mostly just to know I need to improve them!)...but I also say it as someone who...
- has to use 2 browsers (Firefox and Safari) repeatedly throughout most of my working day because some of the systems won't work as well with one browser, including the admin section of this site (I could in fact move to Firefox completely to resolve all issues, but I prefer to surf with Safari)
- for the past couple of years, can't apply for leave or enrol to study on a Mac at the University that I work at (leave applications finally have been resolved!)
The latter example is disappointing to say the least (I used to boot up Windows each time I want to apply for a day off!?), but the reality with the other issue...of a targeting a preferred browser that is available for multiple platforms, is something that is exceptionally common in the web world.
And some of the 'major players' also have Safari issues. Just check out what happens when you try to use Google's online documents system with Safari....
"Safari support for Google Docs is coming soon!
We have heard loud and clear that many of you really want it to work, and we are working hard to make this happen. In the meantime, please try us on:
Mozilla Firefox: 1.0.5 or higher
Mozilla SeaMonkey: 1.0 or higher
Camino: 1.0a1 or higher
All of these are FREE and easy to download and use."
Do I like the fact that I'm pointed to a browser that isn't the one I mainly use? No. Have I accepted it? Reluctantly, Yes.
I would rather have to use one or two of the main Mac browsers than simply be unable to use a Mac browser at all and be excluded from these sites. In that respect, the HoT site is acknowledging and making their site accessible to Mac users. They are not going the full distance to ensure compatibility with the most used browser on the Mac, but they're certainly not shutting us out either. Unfortunately, simply because AirNZ (and others) have achieved this, doesn't make it an easy or inexpensive task for others to achieve.