Hard Coding for OS in Websites Discredited Decades Ago!

[RiversideGuy]

I've been involved managing web application development for years, put my first server up around '93, so I have some knowledge. For many years I was kinda grouped with other developers trying to push websites to use universal standards, not tie only to certain OSes. A decade or so ago, I seemed convinced that damnable practice was at an end.

UNTIL I decided to play FFXIV. Oh, I do NOT use the M$ OS. Had many issues trying to register a SW account, I'd go through the process but never got the e-mail to confirm the account. Oh, I put my first mail server up in the mid-late 80s, so I know e-mail better than most. Did a ticket, they said to call, spend the obligatory hour waiting only to hear they could do nothing for me. Said to try a gmail account, so I tried mine. THAT didn't work (and trust me, I did these things at least half a dozen times).

(see next post, seems there is a limit to text entry)

[RiversideGuy]

So the person who actually recruited me to FFXIV went ahead and got me an account (she plays under M$). Things seemed to work. I HAD pre-ordered and actually did get my skimpy rewards (coupla lvl 1 gear items and a pet/minion).

I'm a great believer in users supporting users, so my next stop was the Lodestone. So I sign in using my SE credentials, all seems fine. Then I see that I seem to have to separately sign into the Forums (if I'm using the exact same credentials, there should be no reason to have to do this double sign-in, BUT Lodestone is not unique here, many places make you go through a double sing-in).

[RiversideGuy]

EXCEPT once I try and get registered for the Forums, I get hung on a setting that says I have to choose my main character. EXCEPT that does not work, I select and it comes back at me asking the same thing. Thought I'd game it by going and deleting a toon I created in the World I did NOT want to play on (excuse me, but recruit-a-friend SHOULD mean I get on my recruiters world to start!). So now I have only one character and STILL I can NOT "complete" my registration to be able to even participate in these Forums. Oh, and I DID try multiple browsers, none of them worked.

At this point I know 100% that there are hard coded for m$ only functions on this website. I REALLY thought this "practice" was thoroughly discredited a decade ago but is seems not. Oh, I'm writing this because I had someone running m$ log into my account and select my main character, that worked just fine.

The Web is meant for everyone, you really need to purge all the "only for m$ os" stuff!

[Angelmichu]

I agree.. I think they really need to revamp their websites into just ONE single login to access your stuff.. its really annoying to have to input all the info every time you load...

I love playing FFXIV but their website and their whole UI/UX system needs a lot of work.

[Badguy]

You think its bad how it is now? Let me tell you what a massive nightmare making a FF11 account was, even logging into the game itself, was so horrednously difficult and obnoxious i will never be able to forget it. Can't even beleive how convoluted that whole site for managing the 11 account still is. Can't imagine the designers are very good at what they do.

Not sure how relevant my post was, but i beelive recently they said they were making changes so certain browsers (not OS's) that will be needed to use the site properly.
ANd the double sing in thing has been a problem for ages for SE, look at when HW dropped, everytime u got disconnected you had to put in you password AND one time pass over, and over and over again. archaic

[Angelmichu]

Like.. I dunno.. I see a lot of ppl playing FFXIV, I think they can afford to hire a company to do what blizzard did way back.. when they merged battle.nets with wow accounts etc, and organized the entire process of loging in and stuff. SE needs to do that if they want to stay relevant, IMO.

But yeah, there are a lot of things in FFXIV that I'm like, "Does no1 in their team know anything about UI/UX??" cuz so many things are so convoluted and confusing, and sometimes even unnecessary.

I'm a graphic designer, not a web designer.. so I can't say much about the back end of stuff.. but I know enough about it that I notice how deprecated the design in their websites are. Nowadays, there are sooo many web designers out there, I'm sure they can hire some1 who'd be willing to lower their prices just to put in their portfolio "I saved SE by improving their user interfaces and user experiences!"

[RiversideGuy]

I kinda didn't want to revisit this thread in case someone wanted to turn it into some relegious war about OSes (glad to see that didn't happen)! Almost wish I couild write Yoshi P a note that it's not just a lack of performance in the game for OS X users (it seems to be mostly OK during leveling, but once I hit cap and want to do end game stuff, it WILL be a serious issue), it's the basic stuff of dealing with SE via a web browser NOT owned by Redmond. It's like they are stuck in the late 90s when so many web sites got gated to one OS over all the others (excuse me, the web was INVENTED by a guy running a very early version of OS X called NeXTStep). Not to mention that they can't seem to even deal with iOS properly (I can NOT use the iOS Authentication app and see a huge long thread of how ifone 6 and all ipad users can't see the "ACCEPT" button for the EULA (it doesn't exist).

[Raist]

I don't have any issues with the sites on my phones/tablets...Android Kit-Kat, Firefox, Dolphin...and I post from my phone at work all the time. And it's not really even a decent Android device at that--it's a bleeding TRACFONE, basically a throw-away phone by today's standards. Forums and SEAM even worked from an old LG-800 series phone that was JAVA based, using UC browser. I've got MSIE "disabled" through DISM, running Firefox as I type this. The launcher uses the MSIE components of the OS... but otherwise, I'm not using Microsoft's browsing technology per se, and don't have any issues. Maybe something needs to be configured in your browser or something? Maybe your iphone is using the Beta (which SE announced last month there are issues with the 9 beta).

[Bovinity]

I don't have any issues with the sites on my phones/tablets...Android Kit-Kat, Firefox, Dolphin...and I post from my phone at work all the time.

Yeah, it sounds like they have some issues of their own but are over-eager to just blame Square and "M$" (as they put it).

Hell, I have no issues accessing the SE websites on a Linux box, for that matter. (Just went and tried!) And the concept of a website having "Hardcoded Microsoft only functions" is pretty absurd to begin with. That's really not even how browsers work, unless a web developer is trying really hard to just troll someone.

[CatfishCassie]

When IE, Chrome, and Firefox all work, and iOS (I'm guessing Safari?) doesn't... I think it's safe to say that Apple's implementation is the problem, not the other 80% of the internet marketshare.