Don’t be a DUMMY…
Sorry, it's been awhile since I really ranted...but this one has been festering inside...In the past 3 months it's became very evident to me that BIG companies do not browser test. And therefore must not care about users. I'm building websites for local, smaller companies, nothing HUGE, but I make sure ALL my sites work properly in ALL browsers. Yes the MAC is a small portion of the pie, but you should still browser test for them. I'm not talking about "display issues". I'm talking about hard core functionality issues. To me...that's plain out LAZY and uncalled for. Below are a few wonderful examples of BIG companies not doing the proper browser testing.
Case 1:
MTV - The Best American Dance Crew
Not sure of the url...they chose a horrible url to start with...
Demographic - Young, HIP, artsy (probably using MACS) You think?
Issue - I wanted to vote for my favorite crew online, which they really push on air, right after the show. Well, I was on my Powerbook and using Safari. THE STANDARD MAC browser. The damn VOTE button, was hidden. Gone! I refreshed a million times, restarted, etc. To NO avail. Opened up in FireFox...worked NO problem. Tried it next week, same issue. Why wouldn’t they test this?
Case 2:
ABC – Grey’s Anatomy
This is so funny...last week I tried to watch the latest episode online. Went to their site, they made me download some stupid new video plug-in...ok, I so I really wanted to see this episode. So I did it. I was on a PC using Firefox, which is about 25% of the population. It would not work at all. Refreshed 2 million times, restarted...nothing. Switched over to crappy IE 7, went through same hoops...an hour later (so it seemed) and very frustrated...it worked. Again, why did they NOT test for Firefox? Hey they won a Webby Award though.
Please people, don’t crash and burn. Know your audience and test. Test again. And test again. Once you frustrate a consumer, their gone for good and moving onto the next website. You lost your golden opportunity. And they may even be frustrated enough to embarrass you in a blog like I just did!