[K12OSN] Can not access science web site. Can firefox masquerade as another browser?

[Bill Bardon]

On Wednesday, Apr 13 Dan Young wrote:
> This is good. You should also complain loudly and often to them for 
> having a broken site. IE-only sites are soooo late 90's.

YES!

Sites that exclude other browsers need to hear from us.  I just sent a
message to these folks along that line.  Some of you may want to
follow suit.  Just don't quote mine verbatim - too obvious.  ;-)

Here it is:



Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:31:55 -0500
From: Bill Bardon <bill at computassist.com>
To: webmaster at pearson.com
Subject: Browser compatibility

The Scott Foresman Science web site (goes with 3rd grade text book)
does not allow browsing with Firefox, even though the browser works
fine, as far as I can tell.  If I instruct Firefox to identify itself to
the server as MS IE 6.0, the site functions without problems.

Do you have plans to include Firefox in your list of acceptable browsers
soon?  Better yet, please eliminate the browser-specific code wherever
possible and make your site accessible to the larger public.  Let users
choose their browser.  See how at http://validator.w3.org/

More schools, including the ones I am involved with, are moving to Linux
and/or using Firefox to escape IE's security woes.  Not just web sites,
but educational software for Linux is going to see a large increase in
market size.  I hope Scott Foresman will be proactive in recognizing
this, and implementing more platform-independent products in the near
future.



-- 
Bill Bardon
COMPUTASSIST
Omaha, Nebraska
http://www.computassist.com