Re: Co-operative Bank withdraws Internet service for non-Windows business customers

Most browsers can masquerade as IE, but unfortunately this isn't the issue here - the service does not function on other browsers or platforms.

Daniele

You shouldn't have to, though. With more and more people going to the Penguin, it's just bad practise to narrow your service to IE. One suspects they've employed web "designers" who aren't quite up to the job.

HSBC's on-line services work just fine with Mozilla & Firefox without any jiggery-pokery whatsoever.

Quite.

Mozilla works fine wih HSBC without a 'change of character'. While tweaking a browser to make it pretend to be another is sometimes a useful fix it doesn't address the fundamental problem of badly written, non-standards-conforming web pages. Ultimately it could lead to web designers believing that everybody uses IE when in fact a large proportion don't use IE but have their browsers set up to pretned to be IE.

Is it possible to define what you mean by "supports only Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer". Third party software of some variety must be installed to use the service ? Are their methods easily circumventable via WINE or some other windows API emulation ?

Perhaps I'll sign up just to see if I can get it working with lynx.

Barclays ibank works even with Lynx over a cellular modem. I have written to thank them for this, perhaps other people should too.

Carrot and stick need to be applied.

Just checked the LloydsTSB one with lynx. I could log on OK, get balances, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to do transactions. Statements are a bit ugly, but would be readable with a little effort.

ian

This has already happened. The various web authoring/design newsgroups are full of people justifying their decision to design only for IE on the grounds that almost all the users shown in their site logs are using IE.

Yes, I realise this is extremely stupid. Especially since my site logs generally show the various flavours of IE as being under 80% of the users, but what would I know? After all I haven't got any web sites designed to only work with IE like they have.

If a few large ISPs or computer distributors took it into their head to distribute Opera or Mozilla as the standard browser there would be chaos. I look forward to it, I'll be getting plenty of work when it happens.

But not Natwest/Royal Bank of Scotland. Konqueror or Mozilla masquerading as IE works fine though.

On my site, I have a work-around for IE's lack of standards compliance, and I can detect Opera pretending to be IE and not apply the fix in these circumstances.

Konqueror or Mozilla masquerading as IE isn't so easy to spot so visitors with this set up will get an IE workaround that makes things worse for them.

All Internet banking should be avoided. No need to choose browsers etc.

If they did then they would suddenly lose their volume discount. Happened to Sharp when they started selling the Zaurus, and if it wasn't for the sheer size of HP they wouldn't have been able to beat Microsoft off over itunes shipping preinstalled on new HP machines.

Places like PC World who sell in the high street also make a small fortune over people bringing in machines to have the spyware etc cleaned off them.

Microsoft are a fairly competent monopoly, and they are assisted pretty well by abject user stupidity.

I disagree. It can be done properly, but most banks don't bother. ABN-AMRO's offering is quite good. None of your password and mother's maiden name nonsense, but you get token-based challenge-response authentication and server applications which actually work and are useful (like electronic payment scheduling in order to take full advantage of free credit periods).

Things like the now-defunct Fsharp and the recently introduced ING Internet banking offerings are indeed to be avoided.

The laugh is that the working ABN-AMRO service was going for two years before ING launched its broken one. But NIH-syndrome ruled, even though I had recommended strongly to my ING banker (who kept hinting to me at the apparently compulsory bi-annual meetings that a killer Internet banking service was on its way) that he tell his bosses to have a look at the way ABN-AMRO was doing it in order to find out how to do it properly. ING's offering ended up being an IE-only system (with ActiveX controls for your rich i-banking experience) with weaker and clumsier authentication than the ABN-AMRO one which works with any old browser.

Apart from their Internet banking service which works, I like ABN-AMRO because they just do what I tell them to do, send me regular statements, do not telephone me every day to try to sell me things I do not want, and do not offer me advice unless I ask them for it and pay for it. ABN-AMRO supply services that I want and otherwise leave me alone. They are brilliant.

Giles.

Are you sure? Or are they just saying they wont support others? There is a world of difference. And if you dont like it, vote with your feet, they are at liberty to specify what they want just as you are to specify what bank you use

I've found quite a few pages thsat don't work in Opera, but never a banking page - they seem to be written properly - but I don't use the co-op. If I did, I'd just lauch IE. I have to for other sites anyway.

And they don't listen to customers complaining tey can't use the page and will be losing their business? Their loss.

Why? No phonecall costs, no waiting in queues, just click what you want put where. I've got 8 credit cards, 2 current accounts, a loan and a mortgage. It'd be chaos without online banking.