Free University not so freely accessible
Posted on September 25, 2002 @ 15:52 in Webdesign
Ouch... the Free University (that is the other Amsterdam university and not the one where I work) has redesigned their website. Taste is debatable, but accessibility is not. You either can access it, or you can't. In this case, the Free University doesn't let me access their site... kind of reminds me of the silly Canadian KPMG website thingy.
Using Opera 6.05 there is no way to access their site. You are advised to either use Netscape 4.7, IE4 (or IE5 on Mac), or to click to enter the site regardless... but clicking that link only takes you back to the same page in Opera. Telling Opera to identify itself as Netscape, Mozilla or IE doesn't make a difference.
The situation is slightly better with Mozilla 1.1, because the site lets you actually continue by clicking the "show me the site anyway" link. However, as this image shows, it will only block your access at a later point in the site. If you click the 'show me the friggen site already' link at that point, you're taken back to the home page instead of proceeding to the particular page you were trying to access.
You get invited to do a guestlecture, but they don't want you to know how to get there. Bit silly innit?
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actually... I use opera and the link worked perfectly for me...
maybe something else is wrong ;)
Posted by Jornt on September 26, 2002 @ 00:13
Hmm... I don't know if this is worse or better than I previously wrote. The site will not display if your browser doesn't accept (session) cookies. I have Opera set to only accept cookies from authorized servers.
Accepting the cookies manually from the site still doesn't let me view the site with Opera. I've tried using Opera 6.04 from my Win2k machine at home and Opera 6.05 from my NT4 box at work. Same problems. I _do_ have Opera set to identifying itself as Opera though.
_Only_ if I accept cookies and have Opera identify itself as IE5 will the site display. So, there seems a way around this now. I've tried all this yesterday and then it didn't work. I did a whois on the domain and called the hostmaster on the phone. He said he'd been on the phone with the web people earlier, because he as hostmaster couldn't even visit his own university's website because he was using Konqueror (on Linux presumably). He said they were working on it. Apparently not hard enough.
Posted by Frank on September 26, 2002 @ 08:30
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