Microsoft Doublespeak – Preying on the Uninformed.

20 October, 2008 at 2:01 pm Quintin 3 comments

You are using an unsupported Internet browser. Please use the most recent non-beta version of Internet Explorer to access this page. If you continue you will likely experience performance issues. Please download this supported version or proceed to the PMC page you requested.

This messages popped up when I tried to view our companies Microsoft Partner Account Status.

Notice the wording: “You are using an unsupported Internet browser.”

I am using Mozilla Firefox version 3, which is more standards compliant than anything Microsoft has rolled out in recent years. Reading the quote above one might think there is something wrong with the browser!

I have one question pertaining to this question:

Unsupported how?

Reading the quote I immediately notice that “unsupported” as used here can mean anything from unsupported by the developer, unsupported by the software running on a particular website or unsupported as in it does not comply with internet standards.

Surely the paragraph is misleading?

Then the next sentence advises the user to use the “…newest non-beta version of Internet Explorer…” in order to view the page.

This infers that Internet Explorer is somehow superior to the browser currently in use by the person staring at the computer screen. That is a bald faced lie.

Anyhow – I ended up calling MS tech support to find out what I need, maybe if they find out I am using a phone running through a Linux switchboard they will tell me that I am using an “Unsupported Telephone…”

No related posts.

Internet, Software Firefox 3, FUD, Microsoft

Comments

Leave a comment Trackback

Written by sn about 4 years ago.

“Unsupported” usually means we use proprietary (a frequently rubbish code) in our site and often usually just something as ridiculous as a drop-down menu made with JavaScript; try to browse http://www.elections.org.za/ as a prime example. By all means, include a disclaimer that your web application requires JavaScript, tested best in [insert some browser], but don’t just disallow access to your site unless someone complies with your more ridiculous requirements.

The sad thing is the page elections.za.org redirects you to has obviously been updated fairly recently to include Chrome us an “unsupported” browser. Epic fail.
Written by Mikkel Markussen about 3 years ago.

Oh get over yourself. Hundreds of thousands of sites do this for completely legitimate reasons, and I’d be very surprised if you haven’t seen this plenty of times before, and just shrugged it off. Hate on Microsoft all you want, but this sort of contrivance is ridiculous.
Written by Dan about 3 years ago.

@Mikkel
I am having a hard time thinking of completely legitimate reasons not to write standards compliant software, it should be a case of write for the standard and MAKE the non-compliant browsers unsupported.
This is one case that I would definitely support, I’m a sysadmin and I am constantly battling with our developers to write for standards not for specific OS versions and browser versions.
Microsoft do some very bad things, on the partner site for instance you get the
“Your browser is not supported click here to continue anyway” you click “here” and lo and behold, you are back at the Your browser is not supported page.
WTF they can’t even write a page that does what it says it does.

Tech

Microsoft Doublespeak – Preying on the Uninformed.

Comments

Leave a Comment

NEW SAMSUNG GALAXY

My Twitter Feed

Blogroll

Sites

Author Spotlight

Quintin van Rooyen

Recent Posts

Meta

Related Posts (YARPP)