285231 - hrblock.com - Links don't display after being selected in FireFox but works fine in Internet Explorer 6

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[dl.duncan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050223 Firefox/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050223 Firefox/1.0.1

In the page at
https://taxes.hrblock.com/hrblock/login/LoginRegistration.aspx?ShowReg=1&TaxType=OTP&PartnerID=180
when you click on a link on the right side of the page for additional help, the
link never displays. This problem exist on Windows XP and Windows ME. This makes
Firefox completely unuseable when using the IRS's free online H&R Block tax
preparation software. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to URL
https://taxes.hrblock.com/hrblock/login/LoginRegistration.aspx?ShowReg=1&TaxType=OTP&PartnerID=180
2. Click on any link.
3. The link will not be displayed.

Actual Results:  
Nothing. This is the problem.

Expected Results:  
Display the link.

No themes were loaded. Firefox used default download settings that were changed
to match Internet explorer 6.0.2800 settings (where applicable). URL was secure
page e.g. https://... Also disabled popup blocker but this didn't help. Saw same
problem on Toshiba 1.7MHz Centrino notebook running Windows XP with SP2 and
650MHz Pentium III running Windows ME.

Comment 1

[José Jeria]

Looks like a Tech Evangelism issue.

Comment 2

[dl.duncan]

We see this bug was assigned to Tech Evangelism. According to information on
your website this is when: "A member of the mozilla.org community triages the
bug and determines that the problem is due to a fault in the design or
construction of the web site or product and reassigns the bug to Tech Evangelism
bugzilla product with the appropriate geographic component." You go on to say
"that incorrectly filing Tech Evangelism issues against the mozilla.org projects
distracts talented engineers from actually working on the Mozilla browser". 
WHAT ARROGANCE! This is like Microsoft introducing a new Windows O/S that's not
backward compatible with major applications and blaming the application for not
meeting a certain standard. Intel could make their processors much more
efficient if they designed them only to support one standard and not be backward
compatible with existing standards. IF YOU ARE SAYING THAT THE REASON A SITE
WORKS WITH INTERNET EXPLORER AND NOT FIREFOX IS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MEET THE
MOZILLA STANDARD, THAN THE MOZILLA STANDARD NEEDS TO BE CHANGED. OTHERWISE A
YEAR FROM NOW FIREFOX WILL ONLY BE A MEMORY OR ONLY USED BY A FEW DEDICATED
FOLLOWERS. We were considering FIREFOX as a replacement for IE in the
telecommunications arena for major players like Nortel Networks, Cisco, Sprint,
Cingular, MCI, etc but your viewpoint of only caring about web sites meeting
your standard makes us very concern. We are also considering asking Kim Komado
to stop endorsing FireFox on her nationwide radio program. Patiently awaiting
your reply.

Comment 3

[David Tenser [:djst]]

There's no need to be upset about it. It's not a "Mozilla standard", it's the
W3C standard (www.w3c.org) which is supposed to be used by all web browsers,
including Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, IE doesn't follow all of these
standards, and because of this, I bet the site doesn't work correctly in any
other browser than IE.

However, if you feel that this bug belongs in another component, feel free to
move it again. If this particular site is important to your business, you might
want to consider contacting the authors of the site and ask them if they could
try to validate their code using the validators at W3C.

Comment 4

[James Darpinian]

I've investigated a little more, and it does seem to be a tech evangelism bug. 
HRBlock has code in there to support Netscape 4, but they can't be bothered even
to test it in Firefox?!  Anyway, the links *do* appear, in a floating frame, but
their javascript code inexplicably assigns that frame a height of 10 pixels. 
Firefox obeys, making it impossible to read the frame's contents (it appears on
the page as an inconspicuous white bar floating below the text "Advice & Help").
 I suppose IE goes ahead and extends the frame as far as it likes to show the
content.  However, I can't test it because whenever I try to login with IE, I
get  a "Server error in /HRBlock application."  Rather ironic that an ASP.NET
application would bomb out in IE, isn't it?  So in my case, Firefox actually
works better (it allowed me to complete my taxes, at least).

Comment 5

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

loading the page gives:

Warning: Element referenced by ID/NAME in the global scope. Use W3C standard
document.getElementById() instead.
Source File:
https://taxes.hrblock.com/hrblock/login/LoginRegistration.aspx?ShowReg=1&TaxType=OTP&PartnerID=180
Line: 54

Clicking on the create user link calls moveTTBox() which calls showHelp(). For
the most part their code is cross browser even though it is heavily laced with
browser forks. The problem is once the javascript executes the link reloads the
page since the link does not have a way to prevent the default action. 

The links should look like: <a href="javascript:void(moveTTBox('InfoBoxContent',
816, 320, 120));" class="clsGlossary">username</a> or use the onclick handler
and have the handler return false to prevent the default action.

Note also that the iframe which is intended to display the help is only 10px
high and is pretty unreadable.

Comment 6

[alanjstr]

7+ years later, is this still an issue?

Comment 7

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

The design seems to have changed.
https://taxes.hrblock.com/hrblock/login/LoginRegistration.aspx?ShowReg=1&TaxType=OTP&PartnerID=180
redirects to https://idp.hrblock.com/idp/Authn/DUserLogin.html

Comment 8

[Robert Farabee]

Unreal that this is still a problem.  Next year, maybe the other tax software and chrome.

Comment 9

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Hi Robert, are you still able to reproduce?

If so, can you let us know what the URL is?

Comment 10

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Attachment: Capture d’écran 2016-01-25 à 14.22.31.png

Robert, 

The issue with the initial report is that we can't test without someone having an H&R Block account.
The initial URL and bug have been reported in 2005-03-08, so 11 years ago now. 

If you are a customer of HR Block (as you seem to imply), your input would be very valuable. 
1. Does the previous URL still work? 
2. Can you reproduce the bug? (as explained before)

If yes we will gladly reopen.