Posted on 11/05/2015 11:57:39 AM PST by Swordmaker
I use Safari, FireFox, and Chrome, depending on the circumstances. At my office I need to use FireFox to pay a wage garnishee for an employee for childcare. . . But the California State Disbursement Office of Child Protection Services used Microsoft software to construct their dysfunctional payment website and it only works with either Internet Explorer on Windows or FireFox pretending its Internet Explorer. Their IT department claims they are Apple Mac and Safari compliant, but you cannot even log on, after it gives you a user name and password. Trying to talk to their customer service IT help phone line number gets you a recording that refers you to your local county Child Protective Services who refer you to the online customer service IT help phone line number that referred you to them in the first place. . . Email requests for help get an auto-reply referring you to your local county Child Protective Services . . . and so on. I have finally given up trying to contact anyone at the SDU. . . they simply DON'T want to talk to anyone, especially no one in their IT department wants to talk to anyone! All I can say is that their current website looks a hell of a lot better than the Ransom Note website it replaced. . . but that one at least worked with all browsers, even if it changed type faces every paragraph and font color every other line! Not to mention changing size, spacing, shapes, and location of buttons, and willy-nilly used radio-buttons, checkboxes, and drop menus randomly to take any required actions!
This has been going on now for four years. A phone call to Governor Brown's office got me a letter referring me to the online customer service IT help. . . You get the idea. All this despite the fact that consumer Mac and Safari usage in California is now approaching 35% and I assume that Mac users owe child support payments just as much as PC users. . . and by law, they have to be paid through the State Disbursement Unit.
So, I have to boot FireFox to pay one government required electronic transfer every time we do payroll. Pain in the nethermost oriface. . . Not a big deal, but it works.
Safari in developers mode can ALSO pretend to be Internet Explorer, sending all the identifying markers a normal website expects. . . but the SDU won't work in that mode with Safari either. . . and several times, it's even balked at working with FireFox. . . then I have to use our VIrtual Windows machine actually running Internet Explorer to make that damn garnishee payment withheld from our employee's pay!
We keep that VM PC running because of only one other website that was also constructed using Microsoft software and it's mission critical. . . and it won't work with anything except Internet Explorer running in a legitimate copy of Windows. Absurd requirement, but their IT director is a real Microsoft snob and absolutely refuses to change.
It’s all they have left.
J ust
A nother
V ulnerability
A nnouncement
I read your post twice. Kind of hilarious that they are too lazy to make their system usable with other browsers. Result: Them not being Mac/Safari accessible after all the billions Apple has poured into the California tax coffers.
Ya can’t get no respect! From that State of California agency at least!!!! :)
Firefox does not comply either unless (maybe sometimes) you using it in Explorer emulation mode....which I was not aware you can do
All other State of California websites are fully Acid 3 compliant as far as I've been able to ascertain, except this one. . . and it's only Windows compliant.
... which was designed by three guys on acid.
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