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There are many hidden instances of incompatibility.
This is not about the US government, but about state-subsidized educational sites (i.e., paid for and maintained with *my* tax money).
The point I'd like to make here is that many of the incompatible sites remain hidden behind a username/password login dialog, which makes the wrongdoers less visible for public scrutiny.

E.g. I am taking a 50-50 in-class/internet Spanish course at a Provicial school, with some assignments NOT working on
- ANY Mac (and I suppose, Linux) browser, because the site is sloppy in the use of capitalization of filenames. Windows browsers/servers, apparantly, act in a case-insensitive way, effectively ignoring bad programming!
- Safari, INCLUDING, for some assignments Mac FIreFox, for no reason at all, except the platform/browser check they are doing, effectively locking out anything that comes from the Mac. Haven't tried faking a MS user agent yet, though.

Apr 28, 08 - 10:42 am Comment from: JAYGEE

Safari Woo!!

Apr 28, 08 - 10:46 am Comment from: MrMcLargeHuge

I'll join on the bandwagon:

It's George W. Bush's fault for this.

Wow, it's so easy to have a catch-all for all of my problems.

</sarcasm>

Apr 28, 08 - 10:54 am Comment from: FatMac

I try to stay away from ".gov" sites as much as possible anyway. One that does work perfectly, so far, is the irs.gov.--I guess they worked extra hard to make sure that one works.

Apr 28, 08 - 10:55 am Comment from: Buster

Damn right they should. Citing a small number of users as an excuse to not waste taxpayers dollars to develop the website NO LONGER APPLIES!

Apr 28, 08 - 11:04 am Comment from: Spark

I had to read 5 paragraphs to learn no more than what is in the headline? One or two graphs as a teaser... okay. 5??? No way. I'll come back for the digest version.

Apr 28, 08 - 11:06 am Comment from: since1985

MrMcLargeHuge: you do know, of course, W. is a mac user.

At the company that I work for, the web developers make a concerted effort to make their web site as compatible as ever with the most browsers out there. About 5% of the hits to our site are with Safari users. It used to be that the web site was developed using strictly Microsoft products and now we use Adobe Dreamweaver. This is revolutionary in itself as my company is very Microsoft-centric. Thank God Adobe makes Dreamweaver for Windows, although Dreamweaver doesn't work very well with Vista (or is it the other way around?). As one of the lucky few at my work that uses a Macintosh, I find that I'm used quite often to test the view-ability of the company web site. I also use iPhoney to test the web site out on the iPhone too.

Yet another example of how Microsoft's deliberate attempts to frustrate interoperability and foster dependence on only Microsoft software, is still wasting many peoples' time and energy. Just think how much further ahead we'd all be had Microsoft played nicely with open standards.

Sure, they may be singing a different tune nowadays when it comes to open standards, but if they really meant a word of it, they'd have some kind of awareness program in place to get owners of websites (particularly government sites like this) to be aware of the importance of cross-browser compatibility.

Of course they're not going to do that, because they as many people as possible to be forced to buy a Windows computer or a Windows license. I still don't believe they have any true interest in open standards - apart from embracing, extending and extinguishing them.

MW: deal - as in raw deal, thanks to Microsoft and the morons who perpetuate their monopoly by running MS-dependent websites.

Apr 28, 08 - 11:10 am Comment from: macaholic

Here is a chuckle for you. Homeland Security website for pre-clearing freight movements across the border (ACE program) REQUIRES the use of IE 5 or newer on Windows, in order to access the system and process your shipment details. How is that for security?

if(SAFARI == SUCKS){
return TRUE;
}else{
System.out.print("it sucks anyway!!!that will never change!!");
}

... depends wich governement...

But searching for security through IE is a perfect non-sense anyway...

Apr 28, 08 - 11:26 am Comment from: Jubei

@Gabriel

DITTO!

Governments don't need to make their sites accessible to Macs. Ultimately, it's a service, not a right. As long as there are alternative ways to do it, all is good.

It's not a mystery why government information is made difficult to retrieve by Mac users. Mac users are predominantly liberal, despite a few vocal exceptions who troll this site (and a few notable right-wing wackos in government and radio)

Paying taxes on-line in KY - boots you out for not having a MSFT browser. Our credit card processor just "updated" their site the other day and broke Safari support for manually keyed entries. They told us to get MSIE 5.0 or Netscape (which y'all know are obsolete). Used the debug menu to change the UserAgent to IE 7 and it works fine.

"It works fine." Think about that. It means there is no incompatibility with the site. That their Windoze-drone JavaScript programmers actually put in code to test the browser and reject it because it's Safari, not because it doesn't work. What the hell?

See Sum Jung Gai's comment, above. That about sums it up.

There are many more conservatives on macs' and on this site than you are aware of.

We just don't go around "emoting" every second like 7th graders.
I know. They talk so much that they have lost their ability to listen. I am a teacher, and I love those kids, but............

The government perpetual bureaucracy, which is 90% Democratic are the ones who make the calls to use MS because it is what they have always used, and that is the critical factor for them.

Let the flames begin.

Yes, I absolutely agree. I just got my US Citizenship last week, all excited, registering to vote, getting my passport... went to the US. Dept. of State website to fill out the online passport application (http://travel.state.gov/). Guess what? The application doesn't even show up! Got annoyed, wrote a nice email to the webmaster about web standards compliance and how to validate their site at validators at w3.org. It's funny how Safari which has more respect to web standards compared to IE's support for web standards is the one that can't access these sites! If only these people know about web standards things would change. I also explained to them that being a government site they should especially be concerned with web standards and accessibility... the same sentiment shared by the author Chris Maxcer. We should all do our bit to educate these people who think that MS/Windows/IE are the standards!

Apr 28, 08 - 12:35 pm Comment from: qka

Best Buy's employment site did not support Safari, or Vista(!), until very recently (< one month).

I guess either Steve Jobs or Stave Ballmer (or both) set them straight!

Write to your congressperson. Yeah, submit the site to

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Print the errors and complain.

@ApplePi:

"Governments don't need to make their sites accessible to Macs. Ultimately, it's a service, not a right. As long as there are alternative ways to do it, all is good."

It depends on which level of Government you're referring to as to how formal the laws are for mandating 'Full & Open' competition and fairness. At the Federal level, to show favoritism is illegal, and as per the FAR, one has to have prepare, staffed & get signed a "J&A;", which which includes a section that details what steps are going to taken to promote Full & Open competition.

And while this sounds like its just for purchasing, it goes deepar. A couple of years ago, we investigated buying a cellular phone repeater so as to cover inside an office building. They were expensive, so we thought that we could just buy one of them, to do an "80% Solution" by covering just the most popular local cellular provider. Well, we were informed by our own Legal office that if we chose to provide the capability at all, we had to pay to provide coverage for ALL providers, since failure to do so would represent a form of selective favoratism, which was anti-competitive.

IMO, the way to crack this nut isn't to ask Governments to "pretty please" provide minority coverage, but to point out to them that by only supporting IE, they're manifesting favoritism, which is usually illegal...and challenge them to prove that what they're doing is *legal*.

-hh

Another problem created by M$.
By not following standards, M$ created a sloppy mess of poor software, add to this a great marketing idea to try to please everyone, encouraging poor software development, blanketing the market with massively bloated software [OS with 50 million lines of code!] riddled with bugs, bugs, bugs.
Yes ... M$ has created a culture of poor software development. Now we need to put these sorry pieces back together and salvage something workable.
The government was just another poor sucker in the game as were over 90% of the computer users of the world.
It will take more time to pull through than most of us would like.

A quick PS:

The way to ask is to submit a "FOIA" (Freedom of Information Act) request, preferably through your Congressman's office.

Because FOIAs must be answered, they can't simply ignore your email sent to Admin and functionally sweep your request under the table to die.


-hh

kenh, you are absolutely right. Fifth generation Republican here and cousin to a former President.

MD word: really

Government sites are public and funded by our tax money. To exclude millions of Safari Browser users is just not acceptable. These websites should be shut down and the Webmasters fired. New webmasters need to be hired to write websites available to all citizens. Recently I tried to register as a Government agent and set up an account so that I could bill for my services. FAILED because I am a Mac User !!!!. Writing and calling the websites and providing feedback resulted in NOTHING. Writing to local congress rep. also resulted in nothing.

Apr 28, 08 - 01:24 pm Comment from: Cubert

Shouldn't the government be using non-proprietary file formats, as well?

I ran into this problem when applying for a position with the City of Philadelphia's free clinics. They would only accept my CV in Word format - PDF was not allowed!

In this day and age of government budget crises, wouldn't not paying M$ a huge yearly licensing fee help quite a bit?

Sorry for double negative.

@hh,

Great post. Another idea is not to tell these people (or the gov.) to make things compatible with Macs. In fact that's NOT the argument at all (like ApplePi would want you to believe!). Rather these people need to change their attitude of designing/programming/architecting something from the viewpoint of MS/IE to designing/programming/architecting for the Web. The Web, stupid, is the platform to which things ought to be designed for not for this computer platform or that computer platform. As I have seen in many cases, and as "Yes seen that" proves it. The problem isn't Safari, it's the mentality of the developers. Moreover if these people put their effort into making their websites web standards compliant, I bet more than 95% of the websites/web apps would work with Safari/Firefox on the Mac right out of the box! So no it's not a question of making something compatible with Safari/Mac. I am pleased that Apple is going the extra mile to make Safari respect web standards. If the Windoz developers become better educated about the web as a platform, the W3 standards, things would improve DRAMATICALLY. Then Tim Berners Lee's vision would become a reality.

Apr 28, 08 - 01:32 pm Comment from: Cubert

@since1985,
I believe, George W. Bush is a Windoze user, or at least he used to be. I remember 2 photos in either Time or Newsweek during the 2004 Presidential election - one of Kerry using a Mac and one of Bush using a Dull PC.

Maybe he has since switched. I know Karl Rove is a big lover of the iPhone - all the easier to fool the American people.
(sorry, couldn't resist)

Apr 28, 08 - 01:35 pm Comment from: LordRobin

My understanding is that web sites don't need to be made "compatible with Safari". They simply need to be made "standards compliant" (i.e. not Microsoft-weird) and Safari will work.

There is no excuse for a website not working with Safari. None.

------RM

FatMac says, "One that does work perfectly, so far, is the irs.gov." What you're probably accessing is the *external* web site. I have a lot of experience on the inside, and the experience is mixed.

Years ago, after using both Safari and Firefox on my Mac (one of the few), I accessed the *internal* site and encountered a new banner - "accessible only using IE 4.0 or later". Yet, except for a subset of that homepage based on proprietary MS web extensions, it was usable the day before. Fortunately, I was able to fake it out using a user agent.

When I tried to get a waiver to install Firefox on a Windows server it was *denied*. When my colleagues in Research tried to replace some older Macs with current gen' boxes, procurement blocked it. "No Macs" is what they were told.

"Governments don't need to make their sites accessible to Macs. Ultimately, it's a service, not a right. As long as there are alternative ways to do it, all is good."

What a steaming load........ Government information should be platform independent, in other words written to open, established web standards.

Apr 28, 08 - 03:18 pm Comment from: Spark

Maybe we should claim Mac using a "disability" so we can get protection under the American Disability Act. If every sidewalk and building in America has to be built to accommodate wheelchairs, the government's web sites should be made to accommodate Mac users.

Apr 28, 08 - 03:20 pm Comment from: NCIceman

I was going to say "Don't blame the web site developers for getting roped in to Microsoft's proprietary toys", but dangit, it IS their fault. Ever developer has the responsibility to do things the right way instead of the easy or lazy way, and testing on multiple browsers is one of those responsibilities. So we can fuss at Microsoft and others trying to usurp web standards for their own ends, but ultimately we developers must make the right decisions on how we do things.

Section 508, a federal directive, clearly states that ALL agencies that receive federal funds must make any digital resource (including websites) accessible to those with visual impairments. Coding to this standard (WCAG Level 1 and higher) usually makes a site perfectly functional in any modern browser, especially if they use up-to-date XHTML coding standards with CSS-based design. Failing to comply or fix long-standing problems are not options.

@Glen -

This is very interesting. You cite section 508- Section 508 of what Title in the Federal Regulations.

(I would like to apply a bit of pressure to the agency I work for regarding this but I need to know the actual regulation chapter and verse to solicit some sort of response.....)

Micorsoft/Dell own government IT. Talk about security risk! Wooo!

Doing a quick search, found this...

http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm

http://www.section508.gov/

FWIW, the general problem that I see with the 508 approach is that it probably still allows IE proprietary elements, which is what locks out other browsers.


-hh

using a mac is a disability...