The Safari Conundrum

I dropped Wachovia last year because of poor service...and their IE only stance. I joined Washington Mutual and their online bill service (though a little shoddy usability-wise) has worked on every modern browser I have thrown at it. Just letting you know that their are other companies that see past IE.

Does Wachovia specifically filter out certain browsers through some sort of browser-detection? Or is their site actually only capable of functioning correctly in IE?

I'm just curious because I tend to find a lot of sites that use Javascript user-agent detection to only allow IE-users in. But when I spoof my user-agent as IE6 (in Safari's Debug menu), most "IE-only" sites run flawlessly.

I can understand (sort of) if a web site needs to rely on certain technologies to work correctly. But when it's fully capable of supporting a range of browsers and chooses not to, that really gets to me.

How has the Safari: Debug > User Agent tool worked for you in this regard? I have had similar problems, of course, with equally petty, insignificant websites like my bank, healthcare provider, and various utilitiies. Sometimes spoofing with the User Agent tool is all it takes, however. Not that that solves the real problem at all. Just curious about others' experiences.

Spoofing the browser user agent doesn't work. The Bill Pay section of Wachovia's online services returns a blank page. No JavaScript detection at all, which means zero alerts, warnings, or explanations as to why the content cannot load. I wrote an email to Wachovia, and did receive a response that basically said I had to use IE, or AOL, for OS X.

My hope is that, in order to prevent shutting out all Mac users, developers will have to build future websites to include support for Safari. Hopefully, in doing so, they will also support all other similarly standards-compliant browsers.

The future of the web is getting very interesting again.

ALso you can't expect most users to know how to set up spoofing.

Maybe Apple could use its power to leverage corporations to design better websites instead of/in addition to bloating Safari to pretend to be IE.

I know you're really talking about browsers here, but I wanted to offer another potential solution:

If you have Quicken for Mac, some banks let you pay your bills online from within Quicken, which I find far more efficient than taking the extra step and doing it through a Web site. Your accounts in Quicken are up to date and your bills are paid, with basically one click.

I know a lot of people diss Quicken for Mac, and it's true that it is but a pale shadow of its Windows counterpart, but for basic banking it's really an excellent tool. I've been using it for about six years now and have had very few complaints. My bank interacts just fine with Quicken for Mac, and the interface is smooth and efficient. I only rarely visit my bank's web site, like maybe once every four months. I can do everything from within Quicken.

Perhaps if enough customers threaten to move their accounts so that they can manage their bills online, Wachovia would take action. My credit union works just fine in Camino and Safari, except for their mortgage loan pre-approval process, which requires IE or Netscape.

This is slightly off-topic, but do you have to pay for an online bill-paying service?
I live in Portugal, and every bank here allows us to automatically pay (no charge) our bills. If you still want to pay for yourself and not have it done automatically, every bank has an online service wich allows you to do so.
There are no Bill Payment Companies here.

Perhaps if enough customers threaten to move their accounts so that they can manage their bills online

I suspect the problem is that Safari still accounts for such a small slice of the browser pie (and probably an even smaller share of wachovia's visitors) that they don't see it as cost-effective to support it. I havn't seen the latest statistics, but for a while there you still had more people using Netscape 4 than were using Safari, and I know a lot of us think it's not worth trying to accomodate Netscape 4 anymore.

conundrum
n.

1. a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun
2 a question or problem having only a conjectural answer

I've found that the new version of the Opera browser will run everything that IE is required the same if not better. For instance, Safari will not run my bank's (CitiBank) online account currectly. IE does, but sometimes pages won't load and will be blank. Opera runs it perfectly every time. I've tested on other IE only sites and seems to work great. Just a heads up.

I'm afraid it will take the Safari team to fix this problem because it seems the average business really doesn't care about mac users and feels that it's our problem to find another way to use their site. I've only run into a few sites that require IE, including the FedEx site only because when I print a package label it is shrunken to about 80% out of Safari for some reason. I pay most bills online through Yahoo Finance and individual sites and view my bank records. Fortunately they all work fine in Safari.

BB&T is another banking service (which I use) with a similar problem. I emailed them and their response was the same - "our website only works in IE and we don't have any plans to change it." They seemed aware of the problem, and unapologetic. Of course, I am a PC user (who usually browses with Mozilla), so switching to IE is no big deal so I can pay my bills. Until your comments I hadn't thought of the implications for Mac users. Bad.

I guess if you had to, you could run IE on a Windows emulator.

My current bank has no issues with IE, Mozilla, Safari, etc... If that changed to only IE, I'd write a complaint letter, explaining how such a decision could affect their customers, and then mention how I'd probably take my business elsewhere.

In the end, what else can you do besides vote with your wallet?

"The future of the web is getting very interesting again."

Really, where is that happening? We still have HTML4 as the predominant markup language on the web, which IE6 supports just fine and thus I do not hear the masses clamoring for anything to change.

It is only of those toiling away creating web applications cursing Microsoft (IE) and the W3C. Since neither group is listening, I am not seeing a bright future for the web.

Most 100-2500 employee sized companies in the US northeast region are happy (note: not content... but actually happy) making websites that work in IE only, or so they tell me. Since many of these are global companies, I imagine that attitude exist around the world.

Whatever internal or external group developed Wachovia's web app was likely told to jump off a bridge when they explained it would cost a little extra and take a bit longer to develop the support (or the correct application 'flow') for it to work in Mozilla, Opera, and Safari.

I would seriously consider switching banks.

I think users of alternative browsers shouldn't "enable" services that only support IE by using it temporarily for that service. They should complain about the problem, and if it isn't resolved, they should inform them that business will be lost.

Realistically, though... even if IE isn't available by default on new Macs, won't it still be available for download? One would think that (at least for a time) users that encounter these kind of services could be sent to the Microsoft website.

def: whither (to go where)
def: wither (to shrivel, fade, die)

I guess both definitions apply, who knows where MS is letting IE for Mac go and what they expect the outcome of no more development to be? Perhaps they will license the technology out? Anyhow, in my experience more online services that used to require specific browsers are now requiring specific technologies - such as javascript, cookies, 128 bit encryption and supporting secure sockets. This means the playing field is more open; these services are trying to encourage greater use by becoming usable on all web-connected appliances not just PC's running IE. Specific sites such as www.royalbank.com and www.cibc.com have actually moved away from only supporting IE to supporting specific technologies due to public outcry that they were in essence endorsing Microsoft. Maybe Canada is different?

"whither" // Thanks for the spelling correction. :)

As for IE / Mac still being available for download, Microsoft has stated that they plan to stop standalone downloads of the browser, and instead fully integrate it into the operating system. So from the looks of it, XP users will have to upgrade to Longhorn to get IE 7 (or whatever they want to call it). The browser upgrades when the OS does, and vice versa.

I just hope Steve Jobs pays his bills online.

He only makes a dollar a year, so if he's paying bills online, he isn't paying many. :)

For my two cents...

I use Southtrust as my bank, and the same Safari issue applies for their online banking as well. It's a blank page when using Safari, but functions fine in IE.

I also run a couple ecommerce businesses which involve utilizing proprietary online merchant accounts and payment gateways to which their website interfaces do not function properly in Safari as well.

So, for those stating that they would 'seriously consider switching banks', I believe that is a short-term solution to a potentially much larger problem that could surface- which Todd nailed right on the head. The problem being Apple users potentially being left standing alone once again, due to OS/software conflicts not allowing 'us' to do what 'everyone else' IS able to do.

The correct solution is for Safari to come up to speed and encompass the same functionality and compatibility as the modern IE has, as well as to surpass and broaden the current browser standards.

I agree with Lauri: I think Safari should have some sort of "legacy" IE support to allow it to use the sites in question - and that can only come from Apple. Just saying "well, it's site builder's fault" does not (literally) pay the bills.

Where is Safari’s Debug menu?

Very interesting topic. I, like most, have lived with this frustration since Safari's release and over that time, I have seen no discernable improvement over that time when interacting with financial institutions.

The vendor's resolution is simple business mathematics. Just apply a cost benefit analysis. However, with Safari stretching to penetrate 2-3% (?) of traffic, unless the lobbying is a collective, then the complaint(s) will get put in the "look at that issue later" tray.

Surely, Apple has to fill the gap and replicate IE's actions. It just won't be able to enforce developing standards. From a business (bankers) perspective, it's the grey people in this world that matter; the colourful people can go entertain themselves.

I use Bank of America for my banking, USAA for insurance, and Ameritrade for investing, all of which work fine in Safari/Firefox. BOA has also done a lot of updates recently to get their site as accessible as possible. :) I have no idea how big Wachovia is, but my guess is that they're not big enough to try to hit everyone, which is extremely counterproductive to their growth, of course.

Check this out (copy-paste):
http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-post-view.php?id=172706

Chicken Little? Maybe...maybe not.

Peace.

Browser sniffing/spoofing sucks. There is only one solution: complain, complain, complain to the site owners AND designers until they fix it.

I used to get an "unsupported browser" message from CheckFree (which runs the online payment service for my MBNA card) because I was using Firefox. I sent an (admittedly bitchy) e-mail to their customer service address, as well as the address for the registered owner of the domain. I never got a reply, but within a month or so Fx worked just fine.

Don't forget that IEwin and IEmac are two totally different browsers. If a site has been engineered to work in IE on both platforms, then they're already supporting two browsers. Chances are that they picked the most predominate browser or each platform. As Safari becomes the main Mac OS browser (as it will), crappy site builders will have to develop for Safari or exclude Mac users altogether. It's a lot more difficult to dismiss an entire computing platform - especially one with an increasing market share.

Actually, OmniWeb was available for Mac OS X before Internet Explorer — it was available for NeXTStep/OpenStep before it became Mac OS X. And it's still around; OmniWeb 5 has some amazing features.

This is not technology problem, it's a customer service problem. The consumer financial services market is fairly fluid and customers can pick and choose based on service. Wachovia clearly has made a decision that 98% service is good enough and if internet banbking is something you need or value then there are many other banks that offer mac support and would love your business?

It is truly Wachovia's fault and neither Apple's nor Microsoft's. Companies shouldn't design web sites around a single browser, even though it happens all the time. I'm sure that if enough Mac users weren't able to pay their bills online, companies like Wachovia would make changes. Then again, the market share is still pretty small for the Mac OS...

Requested above - Safari debug menu - open a terminal(.app) window and type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

and restart Safari. I actually used the spoofing yesterday to log in to a Capital One site to turn off a SPAM setting that I never turned on in the first place. I had an email back and forth to register my complaint. First they told me to ask my ISP or "technical professional" to help with my software or service issue. I politely explained that I *am* a "technical professional", and my software was indeed operating perfectly fine, but someone at Capital One decided not to support the software. They claimed to forward the feedback to the appropriate party(trash bin?)

May not accomplish much, but hopefully if enough people ask about it...

We're all aware of the 95% IE market share development argument. Working in online marketing I would love to see some statistics about Mac vs PCs & IE vs 'all other browsers' for the cash-rich / time-poor, early adopter, ABC1, web savvy, highly educated, opinion forming, large disposable income groups. I'm guessing that the percentage of individuals from this group using Safari (sorry, any non-IE user agents) will be far higher than our clients may think.

Same problems here in the UK with the Natwest Bank. They refuse to support Safari even though Mac IE is crashed by their site.

I wrote several complaints post and email and was basically told to stop using a Mac because Safari and OSX has "security issues, which would make it unsafe to access your account" (direct quote btw).

I now bank with Nationwide.

"It’s a lot more difficult to dismiss an entire computing platform - especially one with an increasing market share."

Actually according to the statistics I keep seeing (sorry I don't have a citation at hand), the Mac's market share has been declining. It used to be around 3 percent but lately it's been down around 1 percent. And you have to remember that although the switch to OSX has certainly picked up, a lot of Mac users are still using OS9 or earlier, so they don't have Safari.

As a bank or other online business, it really boils down to a cost-benefit issue: is it worth the time and expense to accommodate such a small percentage of your potential clientele?

And as much as I'd like to believe that Mac users may make up a larger share of the online banking community, I bet these banks look at their browser traffic and know how many people are visiting their site with each browser. In some cases people may just assume that most of their customers are using IE, but the smarter banks will do an analysis to be sure.

Okay, enough devil's advocate. The one message that might work for these banks is to try to hammer home the fact that 1% of the browser market represents millions of people, because the market itself is so large. It's harder to ignore number like "a few million people" than it is to ignore a number like "1%."

I also had to use IE for Citibank until recently, but IE is DEAD, so spread the word. AND My inside source says that "the Browser" is back, and a new realease of Netscape 7.1 definitely says something to that effect... however, I'm glad Microsoft is not in on this re-revolution!

Young Life, a non-denominational outreach ministry to high school students, has recently announced that the staff-only section of their website will require IE 6.0 or higher. Obviously, folks who have access to the staff-only section are quite a select group, but for any of you who are familiar Young Life, this amounts to a very short-sighted policy that will end up costing local offices a lot of money in upgrades -- for precisely the same reason that requiring Microsoft is a bad idea for anyone's website.

I've done my share of complaining to the powers that be, but what's done is done, and it will interesting to see where this puts us when the new, Longhorn-embedded version of IE becomes the new standard. Anyone interested in the Young Life situation can read my longer treatment of the issue here.

It would be great if the Safari team could figure out a way around this, but that's not going to do anything for users of various flavors of Linux, or older versions of Windows. If Mozilla's in on the fix, then we're in business. And a larger question: is the new version of IE going to finally be standards-compliant, or at least CSS-compliant? I doubt it.

One of the reasons why I wrote this entry was to hopefully spur debate, and perhaps gain some knowledge, as to precisely what companies like Wachovia put in their code that makes their web applications only work in IE?

Are they taking advantage of ActiveX? Are they making use of proprietary IE scripting, like JScript (or whatever the hell Microsoft called their own version of Java / JavaScript)? I have fortunately never worked in a development environment where I've deployed content that has only functioned in IE, so I have no idea what's in the soup.

If anyone has experience in this area, I'd be interested to hear what exactly IE has that the other browsers do not. Something tells me that even if the developers of other browsers, like Safari / Moz / Firefox, wanted to emulate IE behavior, they wouldn't be able to for Microsoft wouldn't open their source.

I work for a financial company and our server logs show about 2% mac usage, so the Safari subset of that group (which we don't even track) is not likely to get any help. Also consider that developers in these places work on PCs, so Mac testing is an afterthought if it is even done at all. The mentality is to cover your butt at the lowest cost, and this means you develop for one ubiquitous browser.

Maybe if there are enough squeaky wheels Wachovia will take notice. A better overall solution would be that developers wake up to the standards movement and make the case to their non techie managers that lean cross browser code is cheaper, better, and faster.

Meanwhile, let's hope for more horrible IE holes like this one .

Kudos to Young Life on a fantastic ministry. I was a volunteer leader in Chicago for several years. We had some great backpacking trips at Medicine Bow in Wyoming. Great experiences all around.

Sad to hear about their site. I'll give Denny Ryberg a call. :)

Maybe we could sue all companies that restrict access to IE only. Let's find a Mac-using judge and I get a law degree and start taking cases. Sounds like a good Grisham book to me.

It's basically ActiveX, though that's not the only consideration. IE tends to do things quite differently from other browsers, so a page which may look ok in IE will be rendered differently enough in Mozilla be unreadable.

Jscript behavionr mostly, but not always, conforms to javascript, but simple things like image rollovers are incredibly difficult in jscript/ActiveX (Or they were when I last tried to do it years ago.) There are some IT managers who just don't want to put in the time to develop cross-browser compatible code. That is, they don't care if it works under Safari or Mozilla, or not.

So much for that old Web Interoperability Pledge. I guess it's no longer operative.

Hey, I'll do you one better, though. I'll see your bank and raise you a wireless ROUTER that requires IE only. The reason is that the router's interface is browser-based, and the javascript is so buggy, you can't change the domain name or open/close a port in its built-in firewall without IE's special ability to ignore all script errors and continue anyway. Any other browser will stop at the first error.

And they are beauts: undefined functions, stray brackets, this stuff was not tested at ALL. How you're going to configure the thing if you run Linux should be interesting.

Courtesy of Belkin, Ltd., who had not only not tested the code, but wasn't even AWARE of this until it was pointed out to them.

Todd, you've got it. The problem can be any combination of the use of ActiveX, bad javascript, or IE only JScript and HTML extentions.

I designed a site to be compatible, and it was, until i tested one of our apps which just sat there with a blank screen. Turns out that the developer used bad javascript (that works in IE) to submit a form through a redirect page (don't ask, mainframes suck). It was an easy bug to fix, but it wasn't caught because developers have a serious case of "it works on my machine-itis."

If your bank uses .asp or .aspx, go with someone else. Odds are they are M$-centric from top to bottom.

[enter my nerd paragraph here]

safari, what a tasty browser.. ie on a mac, not so tasty, in fact.. a bit tart. app developers for banks should know usability..

Slightly off-topic . . but possibly not given the references to Quicken above . . I have a Windows laptop that preceeded my Macs, and now I use it solely for Microsoft Money. I have to find an application on the Mac that matches Microsoft Money in ease of use and functionality. I've tried Quicken, and a couple of other apps . . but none compare. I'm not that keen on double-entry accounting for personal finances . . I have enough fun doing this for my business. Anyone got any recommendations for great Mac personal finance software?

Macworld or one of the other Mac magazines did a pretty comprehensive roundup of personal finance software not long ago, and their conclusion was, like it or not, Quicken is still the best tool out there; all the other ones had pretty significant limitations. If you don't need online banking, though, some of the alternatives to Quicken are not bad; I think Moneydance was one they mentioned.

Might I second the recommendation for Bank ofAmerica. May surprise some folks as BofA handles the banking for none other than...Microsoft!

At least they're doing the right thing online

Found the link to the Macworld review of personal finance software:

http://www.macworld.com/2004/03/reviews/personalfinancesoftware/

Another thing to consider is many institutions, like banks, get their internet products from a single specialty source. For example, I designed a web site for a credit union and was forced to deal with their credit union specialized site host. They had all sorts of strange requirements on what I could or couldn't do when building the site (they even said I shouldn't close paragraph tags. I ignored that one). So it might not be the bank itself that needs to change but the software company that is supplying the method to access customer accounts. Fixing one piece of software could fix problems across many companies.

When online banking found its way to little old Denmark we had the problem of none of the vendors supporting Mac OS. I still remember my mom cursing Virtual PC when she had to pay the bills for my parents small consulting company. Then one bank started supporting Mac OS, and when it became available Mac OS X and Safari. It became a selling point. Soon Mac users became weary of the footdragging of the other banks and started to complain. Recently, this payed off as the largest backend used in internet banking in Denmark now supports Mac OS X. This means that Mac users can now use internet banking at a wide range of banks.

Concerning browser statistics. I saw some numbers recently that said that IE Win was down to 63%. Since people doing browser centric development tend to take one specific browser and run with it, this amounts to a healthy portion of the market being left out. Sure someone who is usually running Netscape on their Windows box can easily open up IE to pay their bills. If instead they joined in with the complaints many web developers would probably be astounded by the unhappy customers they end up with.

Another thing I thought I'd point out is the focus on Safari in this discussion. Sure, you feel left out if you can't access a site in Safari. Chances are, however, that user of Netscape, Opera, etc. have the same or similar problems. Supporting the web standards not only allows access for Safari users, but for a range of browsers letting your customers use their browser of choice instead of locking them in. In the end it's happy faces all around.

There is a tendency for people to just complain amongst themselves if they encounter a site which doesn't work for them. They may feel silly for complaining to the vendor, they may feel that it will not accomplish anything. If, however, the majority of banks in a Windows-centric country such as Denmark can end up supporting all the major browsers, it could happen in other countries where the Mac using population is above 0.5% (I'm not kidding you, there are almost no people in Denmark using Macs).

2¢
- Jonas

Jonas hit's the nail on the head. This isn't just a problem for Apple; this is a problem for anyone on any platform that wants to use the full web with anything other than a proprietary MS product (including any browser other than IE on the PC.)

Microsoft creates the environment for this to happen, but it's sloppy developers and bad management that actually accept this as somehow ok. The only thing you can do is complain and vote with your $$$. Perhaps we need accessibility laws that goes beyond government web sites.

To be honest.. I've been dissappointed with safari from day one. I rarely use it because of it's bizarre way of rendering simple HTML at times. not to mention it's failure to load half the images on a page for no other reason than it just seems to not feel like it.

Safari still needs a lot of work to be a good web browser, sure it's fast.. but that's it's only redeeming quality. For now i'll stick with firefox and IE can keep going down the toilet for the mac.

I agree that if Apple wants to be serious about Safari, they need to take another look under the hood and give us something that overcomes the compatibility issues.

I mean, technically we are paying for it now, seems like you can't even download it unless you fork over the cash for whatever the latest OS kitty is.

I build websites...

I build websites for clients...

I build websites for clients that dont give a damn what browsers their site works on, as long as it works on the clients company directors computer, the company director either: runs a mac, shiney, new, new shiney... ,,,or runs a 486dx running windows 3.1 and a copy of netscape 2 (if i'm lucky...).

so what do I do? i try and point out the marvels of standards, but say the standards sites dont quite work right on the mac, it's like 99.9% of the way there - so the client says - we dont care, our company director has a wintel box.... ...or, the site works great on safari, mozilla, firefox - but the company director has a mac, and he's running IE - so we cant use standards we have to 'hack' it to get it to work....

no win situtation, and i care! most webheads out there couldn't give a damn and it shows...

most people that build websites have either a, never heard of standards, or b, dont care about standards.

some background info.. i'm a web-apps designer/developer, and mostly work on large "hosted solution" business apps. in this industry, the prevailing attitude is definitely "ie only" unless you have a large corporate client that is standardized on something else, which is rare.

A few years from now, web apps won't be being delivered by the sub-standard "standards" we have today - XHTML and CSS are just not good enough to be used for internet-deployed apps for very much longer. I don't expect IE7 to be significantly different from what exists today - Microsoft is putting most of its efforts into XAML. The only hope for the future of open-source driven, cross-platform web applications is Mozilla's XUL, which is the inspiration for XAML, and can hopefully be used to defeat it. I'm very pleased to hear that the major "alternative" browser vendors are breaking away from the W3C (which seems to have its head firmly implanted up its own ass) to form the WHAT working group, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with XUL. If they move quickly, this is definitely a chance to steal a lot of Microsoft's thunder, as XAML won't even be introduced until 2007 at the earliest, and won't reach a saturation point for some time after that, as it will only be available for Longhorn.

I have two thoughts on this.

First, with IE/Mac dying, that opens up the possibility of a Mac-only service that ties in with the banks (perhaps as a part of .Mac). Apple loves to do this sort of thing, as it holds Mac users ever closer to them.

The second is that this is probably not as big a problem as you might think; if you use Opera, you can change the browser identifier sent to the server. Thus, you can tell it to identify itself as IE 6 and get into your bill-paying service.

I'd think about switching banks as M$ will stop online downloads to IE for the Mac in the future... What? Safari has a 95% share of Mac users? If Wachovia does not support your browser stop supporting them.

With the increased market share of Linux (non-IE operating system) Wachoiva should look into the future.. but companies look into the future... hahahaha!!!!

I use Bank of America and they use Netscape in-house... I guess some Banks get it...

btw. I love Firefox.. more features than Safari... but @ version 2 I will review my choices.

I tend to notify companies when their sites don't work in Safari but then I cringe and wait for the inevitable response from customer service that tries to "teach" me the correct way to use their site because they always assume it must be a lack of internet savvy and not a deficiency in their own methods. This despite my telling them upfront that I'm a web designer so I should possess an adequate brain to understand their site! Seems like they don't even read the email and resort to the canned answer list. Extremely frustrating and tells me the concern I try to raise is falling on deaf ears. Customer service is probably not the place to complain.

For some reason, it seems banks are ALL really bad about requiring a specific browser for their online services. Mine informs me that I need "IE3 or newer, or Netscape 3 or newer", but Firefox doesn't work. It doesn't help that they seem to be trying to break every piece of HTML code and have several buggy java applets just to tell me "your email address is THIS. click here to change it", scrolling across the screen.

Also, as far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has stopped developing IE for Windows as well. They've said that there will be no major updates to it until Longhorn and so far, the only thing different about IE in Longhorn is a different skin and a horrible popup blocker. *sigh* I suppose this is the best time to be a Firefox/Opera evangelist.

Regarding Mac market share:

The Google zeitgeest (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) has Mac at 4% of the market, TheCounter.com has it at 2 (http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/May/os.php). Take both with a *huge* grain of salt, though, as Google naturally loses a fair amount of MS-centric trafic to MSN search and TheCounter is, well, TheCounter (look at their list of user agents and you'll see that their sniffing isn't what it ought to be).

In any event, Mac is barely holding it's own. The G5s have been a major sales disappointment for Apple, actually (too expensive, IMHO). Apple's not really growing, despite it's momentum in the geek community--and this is from a guy who just bought a new PB and will probably buy a G5 in the next 12 months.

Regarding AOL on OS X: someone above (I forget who) said their bank supports only IE and AOL on OS X. That's fine, then: AOL on OS X uses the Gecko rendering engine--the same 'guts' as Mozilla, Netscape 6+, Camino and Firebird. Any of those browsers should work fine.

Regarding IE on Mac: IE/Mac is alive and well; it's just been renamed 'MSN for Macintosh' and costs $9.99/mo.

Regarding IE-specific sites: if the site supports IE Mac, then the issue is either that they haven't debugged it in other browsers or they're using the MS-DOM with their JavaScript (usually the document.all and document.tags collections) as all the Active-X, ADO, databinding and behaviors hoo-ha is IE Win only.

Regarding companies whose sites are IE-only: vote with your wallet. Seriously. I've been using Mozilla with Citibank in the U.S., PostBank in Germany and now Barclay's in the UK. If a vendor doesn't support anything but IE, I walk. Period.

I run into the Wachovia problem too. After reading Zeldman's book one must just assume that the only way to make progress is to destroy the old. Hopefully enough Mac users will complain to their respective banks and such so that change is made.

As has been mentioned, both Safari (by enabling the Debug menu) and Firefox (either through a preference or a plug in) allow spoofing of the user agent, which gets you by 99% of restrictions such as these. Most disturbing to me is that Safari has an odd caching scheme when related to the results of POST operations, and every once in a while responds poorly to forms that are handled correctly by other browsers. I'd like to see another bug fix to Safari, and soon.

Is this only a BillPay thing with Wachovia? I've been using Wachovia for over a year now and their online account service (viewing account balances, funds transfer, etc.) works just fine in Firefox and Opera on my PC.

I use Bank of America's online bill pay service with Firefox (v0.8 & 0.9) with no troubles at all (on XP). Their services are free as long as you use direct deposit or maintain a ridiculous balance on your account (I use the former).

Glad you brought this up as I refuse to use the bug-ridden, spyware laden IE 6 on XP anymore. Long live Mozilla!

i have run into this provblem myself as a developer myself i remeber days when netscape 4 was every programmers nightmare. And as developers we had to work around these obsticles and complete tasks that would sufice for all browserws. Although i agree that from a large companies perspective a small chunk of people are not a concern yet as developers these programmers have copped out and seem to be week little wannabies to me,
MAC forever

Came to this a little late, but if you're interested in seeing what's being passed around behind the scenes by your browser, might I suggest downloading a little Java app by the name of Charles that was written by a friend of mine, Karl.

It's a useful debugging tool in all manner of situations - we find it indispensable for day to day web development and it might give you a clue as to what's going on with Wachovia.

Until Safari starts popping up significantly on the log analysis radar, no online banking service is going to go out of their way to support it. I speak as an online banking system developer.

My employer wasn't going to support Safari even though we have a number of Safari users who have complained about Safari bugs. The share was just too infinitesimal to notice.

Except that I'm a Safari user (well, OmniWeb but same underlying engine). That means that our online banking is going to be tested in all of the Mac OS X browsers even if it requires some personal time to do so.

Thus, I suspect that Wachovia (and others) probably don't have a Mac advocate on their development team. Every company's Web team should have one.

I too use Wachovia, and while I agree that switching banks is an option, it would leave the underlying problem unresolved. Until enough Mac users with real money (and I am most assuredly NOT one of them) threaten to take their accounts away, the issue will remain. UNfortunately, it is incumbent upon the Safari designers to find a way, a hack even, around this. Even if it means sending a message to the sites fooling them into thinking that they are dealing with good ole IE for WinX.

I can get my balance and see reent transactions on my Wachovia site, which is more than I could do with the beta Safari. However, Billpay is still thoroughly within the confines of Internet Explorer. Actually, it's one of the only reasons I USE IE anymore. Well, a fw porn sites have trouble with Safari, but I am way too ashamed to submit a bug report asking for better access to Lifeguard frat jocks.

While I'm no fan of IE it should be pointed out that they recently ramed up work on it. I was just on the blog of one of the guys on the team the other day. Unfortunately I don't remember where. So, while it is annoyingly behind th etimes and over used it's probably safe to assume they'll be catching up soon. Probably with some more propriatary extensions or something but, whatever.