Browser issues

The Mozilla Browser (with its derivates like FireFox) is one of the best on the planet - and it runs on both Windows and Linux. It is well designed from a security stand point, complete (support for JAVA and Flash) and rather fast (at least compared to Internet Explorer). Furthermore it has features like tabs and popup-blocking. Microsoft, in this particular case, does not appear to follow the pace of development in browsers and Mozilla is gaining market share rapidly.

Large organisations are telling their staff and students not to use IE (see also this Informationweek article

Mozilla has great HTML support, and pretty much covers every feature that IE has - apart from local and insecure Windows functions - and tries to be reasonably compatible. The only problems appear when IE does not adhere to standards or is ambiguous in in its treatment of features. It is pretty easy to write webpages that look fine on both browsers though not everyone appears to be capable of doing so and there is this trend at WUR lately... See below.

The following list refers to WUR sites:

We@WUR

Started late 2005: Currently can only be used from IE. Why is everyone surprised only half the users will update their information?

• Amendment: Login and edit works for Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20051007 Debian/1.7.12-1

Editing WUR sites

Started late 2005: WUR moved to a Microsoft platform for maintaining web sites. Suprisingly you can only edit from IE (!). Something to do with the login.

• Amendment: Login and edit works for Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20051007 Debian/1.7.12-1

Viewing WURTV live broadcast

This site only supports IE.

Webaccess to W-drive

wic.wur.nl only presents a list of your files for download; there is no field to upload files. This page should have an <input type='file'>. Uploading is only possible using Windows/Internet Explorer by dragging files into the browser window. The upload feature used to be available in Banyan's old bic.wau.nl, so this is a loss of functionality in wurnet.

Wageningen Desktop Library

Everything should work fine in Mozilla and Firefox. The library makes it a point to support both Mozilla and IE! If you encounter any problems, please mailto:servicedesk.library@wur.nl, and include the exact page url in your message.

Student Education Programme

The following appears to have been fixed (Great!): The server uses XML and style sheets and checks for the browser. It just kicks off Mozilla - I think it uses some IE DHTML to find frames. Ugly and should be fixed. Your only option is to use IE with CrossOver under Linux.