PG&E’s website today told me that I was using an unsupported browser (I use Opera most of the time). As I was trying over and over to work around the problem they prompted me to fill out a satisfaction survey. I answered all of the questions with “Excellent” because they had to do with user friendliness. However, at the end it asked for a comment. This is what I wrote:

Your website tells me that my preferred browser (Opera) is not supported. This is sad since it happens to be the fastest browser, the most secure, compared to IE and Firefox, and the most “standards compliant” browser available. Everyone has rushed to support Firefox because of media attention but a superb browser such as Opera, which has been around years longer than Firefox, is passed over again and again. It would be nice if the web developers of this generation would get up to speed and get on the same page as everyone else. Stop supporting incompatible browser technologies created by Microsoft developers who want to create their own version of the Internet.

More people need to complain when their preferred browser isn’t supported, particularly if it’s one of the top alternatives (Opera, Firefox, Safari for Macs, or Konquerer for Linux). These guys need to realize that the world is not made up of just Bill’s boys. The law makes special accomodations for disabled people, maybe we need to get similar laws for people in a minority computing category like Macs or Linux. A law needs to be written that says any website must be compatible with any standards compliant browser. Making an IE only website only limits your exposure. When will web developers realize that?