Online Banking: ICICI Bank Supports Firefox Web Browser

A couple of days back, when I was doing online banking with ICICI Bank, I noticed that they have added support for the Firefox web browser. This is what they say in the front page of their website.

Best viewed with Internet Explorer Ver 5.5 and Ver 6 or Netscape Ver 7.3 and Ver 8 or Firefox Ver 1.5 with a resolution of 800×600

I really appreciate ICICI Bank for supporting the Firefox web browser. The reason is that now their website will work smoothly with all the platforms on which Firefox is available. That is really much more customer friendly than only MSIE websites.
But the next question is, is this the right way to do it? What about other browsers like Mozilla, Galeon, Opera, Safari, Konqueror and the various versions of them? And why Firefox 1.4 is not supported?

What I believe is that a web application cannot keep track of (or should not keep track of) which browsers it will work with. Web application developers should simply stick with the standard set by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and make sure that it works with all the standards compliant web browsers. That way they can just say that “This website is best viewed with any W3C standards compliant web browser.”

Maybe someday ICICI Bank will support the Any Browser Campaign. But one thing that I can say for sure is that ICICI Bank’s website is much more usable on GNU/Linux than other banks like HSBC. I have used both websites, so I can tell.

ICICIdirect.com: Unfair System Requirements

I have an account with ICICIdirect.com website for doing online trading. But many times their website doesn’t work smoothly with web browsers available in the GNU/Linux operating system. Whenever I find out such glitches, I report it to their customer service. Most of the time I would be getting some canned response asking me to “upgrade” my system to meet their minimum system requirements. And what is their minimum system requirement? From their website (check the above screenshot),

Minimum Browser Requirement: You must have Internet Explorer 5.5 & above or Netscape Communicator 4.7 & above.

I have many times asked their support team to look into the AnyBrowser campaign, but so far nothing has happened. Their front page still displays the above minimum system requirements.

Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.

That was said by Tim Berners Lee more than a decade ago!

I always use GNU/Linux operating system. And I would like to see ICICIdirect.com work smoothly with the browsers of my favourite operating system. Towards that end, I keep sending them feedback regarding this issue. If you were inconvenienced by ICICIdirect.com because of their unfair minimum system requirements, please send their customer support an e-mail saying so. If enough people complain, I am sure ICICIdirect.com will respond. In the past I always found them to be responsive to customer complaints and requests.