117602 - ns.nl - Dutch railway site blocks non-IE

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Dutch, defect, P2)

Description

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen) (away from Bugzilla until 2025-12-29)]

The site of Nederlandse Spoorwegen (the Dutch railway company) blocks access to
any browser that doesn't identify itself as IE. Mozilla gets blocked.

Comment 1

[Reinout van Schouwen]

This problem exists since Jan 1st. Reports are that all Mac browsers, IE
included, are denied access. People are already sending mail to
[e-mail] . This is high priority since the online
travel planner is heavily used by lots of people.

Comment 2

[z-aillon.c-obsolete2]

http://www.ns.nl/js/browsercomp.js

this.compatible=(this.ie4 || this.ie5 || this.ie5mac || this.ie6);
....
if (!this.compatible){
    location.href="../overig/pop_oversite.html";
}

Comment 3

[z-aillon.c-obsolete2]

It looks like they are blocking us only because they made up some weird code
that they could have gotten better code from Millions of places online.  Their
image swap code only uses layers or document.all which is dumb because they can
copy XBrowser code from many places.

With a few exceptions, most of their code wrapped in if (is.ie) blocks will work
in Mozilla/NS6.

Comment 4

[Tristan Nitot]

confirming wiht N621, accepting bug, sending letter to the webmaster.
Setting P2.

Comment 5

[Olav Vitters]

Someone created a site to send a standard email to NS.

Dutch version:
http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~mike/ns.php

English version:
http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~mike/ns_eng.php

Currently 815 people have used this page.

From several discussion I've learned that the design was created by EDS. The
implementation was done by Rhinocreations (http://www.rhinocreations.com, also
IE only). Rhinocreations said that the part that they created was delivered 1.5
years ago and claims that it is logical that Netscape 6 and Opera 6 are not
supported.

Comment 6

[Laurens Schrijnemakers]

[don't know if this is still on-topic. If not, sorry]

Using the predefined e-mail is nice, but if you can spare a few minutes it's
probably much more worthwile to write a little bit of text yourself. It may be
useful to make references not only to 'alternative' browsers / OS's, but also to
mobile devices (will be BIG for acquiring travel info in the near future!) and
browsers for the (partly) blind. Sending a snail mail to costumer service (those
poor ppl don't seem to have e-mail until Q3 2002...) will probably make an even
bigger impression.

NS Klantenservice
Antwoordnummer 4470
3500 VE Utrecht
The Netherlands

Those interested outside The Netherlands will have to put a stamp on that letter ;-)

Comment 7

[Olav Vitters]

Received the following email from [e-mail] (translated
from Dutch):

Dear visitor,

First of all our apologies for your inconvenience with the limited access to the
updated Internet site of the NS.

During the building and implementation of the new site NS has had to choose for
a first release with only access using Internet Explorer. This because of the
in-between functional incompatibility of on Netscape based browsers.

In our upcoming release multiple browsers will be supported. This release is
planned for this month. We will keep you informed.

Kind regards,

NS Internet

Comment 8

[z-aillon.c-obsolete2]

*** Bug 119437 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Olav Vitters]

Attachment: Email from NS #2

Attaching 2nd email from NS (translated). Mozilla should be supported by
January 19 (but the email seems to imply that Netscape 4.62 and 6.0 will still
be blocked). NS also included some visitor statistics broken down per OS. But
these figures are from January 7 till 11. It seems that NS wanted to justify
their chose for only allowing IE. But during this period NS blocked non IE
browsers (therefore Linux, etc) and this was after launching the site. Pretty
stange.
The other justification for launching the website with only IE support was the
launch date of the Euro. This company is confused.

NS also talks about the accessibility of their website. They include a link,
which points to a (dutch) story, content is unrelated to NS.

Comment 10

[Michiel van Leeuwen (email: mvl+moz@)]

The website is updated, and it seems to work now (at least on linux nightly
2002011921).

Comment 11

[Jesse Houwing]

confirming for win2k too (2002011604)

Comment 12

[Tristan Nitot]

received confirmation of this from their webmaster.
Site is ok, and will improved further with time.
Marking Resolved FIXED.

Comment 13

[z-aillon.c-obsolete2]

Verified fixed with 2002021821 builds.

Comment 14

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

move...