Specific browser/platform required idiocy
bit-b...@maney.org
Given that Election Day is next tuesday and that I'm going to be
travelling in from out of town to vote (didn't get the absentee
ballot in time) I went to the website for the City/County Government
[URI:http://www.lfucg.org/] yesterday to look up the location of the
polling station and to verify which precincts and districts I'm in.
They've got this nice "Vote on November 5th" logo. Seems like the
logical link for voting information, so I click on it and guess what
happens. I get two nice little javascript pop-up windows stating that
I must use MSIE version 4 or better on a MS Windows machine in order
to use the website.
It's one thing for a private individual or company to do something
knuckleheaded like that, but it is completely inexcusable for a
government entity to not only support an illegal monopoly but to
actively prevent it's citizens from being able to access critical
public information. Hell, it's arguably illegal under the ADA and
voter disenfrachisement issues.
Morons.
fpsm
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Daniel R. Tobias
> Given that Election Day is next tuesday and that I'm going to be
> travelling in from out of town to vote (didn't get the absentee
> ballot in time) I went to the website for the City/County Government
> [URI:http://www.lfucg.org/] yesterday to look up the location of the
> polling station and to verify which precincts and districts I'm in.
> They've got this nice "Vote on November 5th" logo. Seems like the
> logical link for voting information, so I click on it and guess what
> happens. I get two nice little javascript pop-up windows stating that
> I must use MSIE version 4 or better on a MS Windows machine in order
> to use the website.
In my browser, I just get a completely blank page. Maybe it's because
I've got Mozilla configured to ignore unrequested popups (makes
browsing so much more pleasant). Viewing the source shows a heap of
clueless JavaScript with rude messages, which not only bar non-Windows
and non-MSIE browsers, but even bans the AOL browser. Now, if I were
sufficiently obnoxious to want to ban people based on their browser or
ISP, then probably AOLers would be the first group that I'd ban (and
redirect to a page telling them to dump that crappy proprietary
service and get a real ISP), but still, it's not proper for a
governmental site to be discriminating in that way.
--
Dan