I have seen many many browsers out there... and there are probably many more unknowns and ones that aren't getting as much traffic. I think that a designer would have to have a good grasp of a few browsers that are working better and others are more popular. And if it is business oriented, then a few browsers should support their site... or they just won't have the users that they are looking for... and that is their loss.

I started playing around with my site, and it said that I may have a few Netscape errors... After troubleshooting a few times... I thought I would at least give my users an option of downloading or going to the IE and Firefox setup pages... in case they want to be able to view it in a different screen. I know tons of people who don't care if it's IE or Firefox etc.... If they are interested, and would like to follow my page more, then they might be interested in DLing a different browser.

I think that it may have been easier for this designer to just cover his/hers tracks by just blocking and shutting off options instead of going ahead and re-direct or to fix certain problems... if lack lazy processes continue to, well, continue... then there may be more problems on the horizon... and soon that link will be dead, and the site will be done. But that is being very dramatic... it just seems that if the user is interested, he/she will jump through designated hoops to use that site... or they won't.

Good luck with all of your sites out there.... and hope we don't come across this in our designing endeavors.

- skedad-

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It varies from version to version, I initially thought that AOL owned Netscape, so that it uses the Gecko-based (Firefox) rendering engine. But it turns out that the AOL browser does use the Trident (IE) rendering engine.

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Woah, AOL has their own little browser lol?

What does it use the Internet Explorer engine or something .

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Ahaha. Well, that's smart. I make sure my websites are compatible with IE, Firefox, and Opera, and my sites are mainly just personal sites. This one's a business, and they don't even make an effort to include everyone?

I use Opera, so I'm not blocked, but I'm also not supported. I thought it would also be blocked, since Opera's another alternative browser, but I guess not. It incenses me that it should choose to support only IE and AOL. AOL, of all browsers! AOL is so annoying (I should know, since AOL's my current ISP), what with all its obscure updates, quirks, and what not. I just minimize it and not look at it whenever I use the Internet. It's just not good. I'd rather use IE than AOL to surf the 'net.

Maybe, like how some others have posted, it was the designer's fault for just giving up when he/she realized that the site didn't work on other browsers. But in that case, it's also the company's fault for letting the designer do this, or not getting someone else to design a cross-browser compatible site. It's not smart. Besides, people using other browsers that visit the site will probably be infuriated that the site just didn't care about them, and so leaves a large portion of possible customers.

Serena

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I've also noticed this. (I'm using Firefox 2.0) But, considering how this person obviously has no idea what they're doing, it seems to make sense that they didn't even block browsers correctly. Besides, even if they had blocked browsers correctly, they still wouldn't have been able to stop me from accessing their site. All I have to do is change my user-agent using a Firefox extension (this can be done in Opera without an extension) to IE6. That would trick them into thinking I was using IE. :-P

Even from a business sense it makes no sense to block browsers: if it doesn't look good in Firefox or some other browser besides IE, it doesn't mean they shouldn't let people access it. Sometimes a tiny detail that's off-centered wouldn't bother people so much as it bothers the web designer. You never know how much business you can gain by letting people access your site. :-) Granted, it's not blocked so I can't say anything more about the issue.

Mark420 is probably right: whoever designed it did a horrible job and didn't bother to fix what he had and chose instead to dump the responsilibity on the users. I'm relatively surprised they even let him keep the job. In fact, just looking at that page makes me surprised.

I have heard of sites blocking Firefox because of Adblock, and I find that equally stupid. I could, like mentioned above, change my user-agent, after all.

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