Why are some internet sights incompatible with certain browsers?

[TheForce]

I have been trying to access my EZ-Pass account for weeks and it keeps saying I fail the security test. Tech support tells me I need to reset the password and I do but can't use that to log in either. Every tech person at EZ Pass admin tells me something different. Finally, yesterday a lady said what browser are you using? I said Google Chrome. She said our new web site doesn't work with Chrome or Internet Explorer. You have to use Firefox and it will work. WTF? I asked about Safari and she said they are not Mac Compatible. Use Firefox and it will work. She was correct! Firefox worked fine, recognizing the security code and I was in.

For curiosity sake I tried to use Internet Explorer, latest version update and it wouldn't even go to the login page, kept going to Comcast.com, really weird!

Why do some websites only work with certain browsers?

 

[klang]

Can't explain why but I can sympathize. We are changing business banking to Bank of America's CashPro service. They are extremely strict on which version of the various browsers are supported. I had to downgrade Firefox on my work pc to version 33 to support a check scanner but it turns out the BillPay part of the site doesn't support 33.

I end up having to use the old Firefox to scan checks but IE for everything else.

 

[StevenD]

You can always add web pages that to the "Compatibility View" list in IE. This will generally fix any issues you have.

 

[Ilya]

Why do some websites only work with certain browsers?

Because some developers or site administrators got lazy!

 

[Foxbat]

Or they were told to only support such-and-such browser by their bosses. But you would think that a customer service site would try to be more amenable to their customers.

We have a few Cloud-based applications that we have to support at work. One requires a specific version of the Java Runtime Engine, which, of course, is not the version with all the exploits excised. Another wouldn't work with IE 11 until the vendor updated their application, while we had to tell our Corporate IT to hold off pushing the IE 11 update out to our site until the vendor was ready.

 

[TheForce]

I just discovered another site that doesn't work with Chrome anymore. Royal Caribbean Cruise lines reservation site kept giving me an "Oops! we're on vacation, come back later. After a week of this nonsense, I tried to log in using Firefox and it worked fine.

I used to use Firefox exclusively for years and one year I began to have trouble and the browser just kept crashing so I switched to Chrome which offered many conveniences tying features all together with auto storage and lots of plugins. After learning it I was happy and just kept Firefox as a backup. Now Chrome seems to be the one with all the problems.

This is why I won't do an OS upgrade that often. Seems the code writers decide what I want new and then break stuff I use all the time just to shove stuff down my throat I don't want or need.


When visiting my family a few weeks ago I met a guy who is dating my wife's niece and we hit it off because he is in the TV production business. He was telling me all the trouble producers are having with the new cloud based software from Adobe and Autodesk. He said you can't trust the cloud stuff because it causes you to lose money on bids now with the cloud stuff going down or modified causing a new learning curve in the middle of a project deadline. Glad I retired from it.

 

[navychop]

ADP Workforcenow only works with Chrome and Firefox. Temporarily, it does not work with I.E.

BTW, Apple dropped support for Safari for PCs years ago.

 

[mike123abc]

I just discovered another site that doesn't work with Chrome anymore. Royal Caribbean Cruise lines reservation site kept giving me an "Oops! we're on vacation, come back later. After a week of this nonsense, I tried to log in using Firefox and it worked fine.

I was just on it today (and have been off and on for a week) working on a cruise I take next month and it is working with chrome. Maybe bad cache issue?

 

[harshness]

Much of the problem is that it is really hard to do cool things using the established standards. Another issue is that none of the browsers fully support the standards. IE, as one might expect, is far and away the worst as Micro$oft has long been a lone wolf in trying to de facto their own, not particularly well defined, "standards". Safari on Windows was never a good idea and even Apple came to this conclusion as navychop notes. Opera switched to using the Google Chrome engine a while back so while it is arguably more compatible that it used to be, it has adopted many of the fundamental flaws of Chrome by reference.

Another issue is that many site authors are lazy and they use development tools and extensions that only support certain browsers.

Firefox is perhaps the most consistent (deliberate) in their community standards support so it is most likely to work (unless the site uses Micro$oft or Chrome specific extensions).

The latest CERT list has a pretty substantial list of Chrome and IE vulnerabilities (although perennial death-trap Adobe owns the charts this week):

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/bulletins/SB15-292

There's a mad rush going on now to port things away from IE as it has been officially retired from development by Microsoft but it won't be easy as the proprietary code isn't easy to replace.

 

[mike123abc]

The latest CERT list has a pretty substantial list of Chrome and IE vulnerabilities (although perennial death-trap Adobe owns the charts this week):

The current chrome version has every one of their listed vulnerabilities fixed... Google does seem to take reported vulnerabilities very seriously.

 

[harshness]

The current chrome version has every one of their listed vulnerabilities fixed... Google does seem to take reported vulnerabilities very seriously.

Like Apple and Microsoft, Google often doesn't report bugs until they believe that they have a solution. The week that iOS 9 became available, the list was miles long on iOS 8.

In Chrome's relatively short history, it has hit the charts well over 500 times. To me that rises to the level of "systemic" and "fundamental".

 

[SatLink2205]

I think it is the onus for these types of problems is on the website developer for not testing for compatibility. Another similar issue that irks me is the lack of mobile compatibility or a workable mobile version of the website they are publishing online. Those types of issues would tend to hurt their bottomline anyway, so I always wonder why people don't want to try testing it out beforehand, or at least try to address problems at once when they are uncovered.

 

[mastermesh]

there's a lot to programming multi-browser support. It seems like it'd be easy to do, but it's not. The problem is that they all view the standards differently and over the years have approached them differently. Firefox, being most community oriented is usually pretty good, but for some sites that just doesn't work since developers like microsoft or google centric junk. I personally just install a lot of different browsers if a site doesn't work that I want to use... If chrome doesn't work, try firefox. That doesn't work try opera. That doesn't work try i.e....

 

[harshness]

there's a lot to programming multi-browser support.

It is only difficult if you use tools that don't employ established community standards (versus those of Adobe, Google or Microsoft).

That doesn't work try opera.

Now that Opera is largely based on Chrome, if Chrome doesn't work, Opera probably won't either.

The point needs to be to discontinue use of tools that are using proprietary libraries that simulate standards with half-baked workarounds that break on significant browser or Java updates.

 

[JerryDowning]

I have used Firefox extensively for years but I have experienced errors, freezes, and crashes lately on both of my PC's. I am gradually changing my accounts to IE. Hopefully things will get better.

 

[mdram]

I have used Firefox extensively for years but I have experienced errors, freezes, and crashes lately on both of my PC's. I am gradually changing my accounts to IE. Hopefully things will get better.

good luck with that
IE is horrible, i gave up on it

Edge is even worse

 

[harshness]

I have used Firefox extensively for years but I have experienced errors, freezes, and crashes lately on both of my PC's. I am gradually changing my accounts to IE. Hopefully things will get better.

As IE has been declared discontinued (but with patches available for some of its hundreds of bugs), you're moving in the wrong direction.

 

[JerryDowning]

I was wrong in calling it IE. It's just a habit I guess. I should have called it Edge. I have used Chrome and did not like it. I have always been a fan of Firefox but I have had some bad luck with it since updating to Windows 10. Edge has been OK so far but my experience of using it is limited.

 

[Foxbat]

We just got told by IT that Microsoft will discontinue IE support for anything less that version 11 starting this upcoming January. Also mentioned was the Chrome browser versions for XP and Vista will be dropped in April 2016.

 

[harshness]

We just got told by IT that Microsoft will discontinue IE support for anything less that version 11 starting this upcoming January.

Since IT is usually the reason that people are forced to use IE in the first place, they are the problem. Shame on IT for getting sucked into the Microsoft alternate reality.