And here's an example of why you need Internet Explorer, even if you hate it

[dreamshark]

In a recent grumbly post about setting up a new computer I mentioned that I had spent a massive amount of time getting Internet Explorer to work even though I rarely use it, and minnehaha asked why I needed it.  Today I ran into another example of why. I was trying to submit a form on the American Airlines site about missing bonus miles. Using my preferred browser (Chrome) I filled out and submitted the form, only to get a message saying, "System Error. This feature is currently unavailable. Please wait a few moments and try again."

So I waited about 20 minutes and tried again (this time taking the precaution of saving the text I had typed in). Again, same failure. So I cranked up IE and tried one more time. Worked perfectly. Notice that the original error message said nothing about unsupported browsers. They probably had never bothered to test their stupid software with anything but IE, so they didn't even KNOW what browsers they supported.

Comments

[laurel]

Ugh. Yeah. I hate that sort of thing. I usually don't think of using a different browser until after a couple of tries (or much longer), then I'll switch from Chrome to Firefox (when Firefox was my main browser, it was Firefox to Chrome) and then try Safari and then Opera. I think I usually give up on a site before I get to the point of Internet Explorer, but that's just me. (Don't think I have IE installed on any of my current machines, but I used to have it for the same reasons you cite. A last resort for certain websites.)

I no longer recall which site it was that I was using where I constantly got a non-helpful error message to the point I emailed them to complain. Oh! I think it was a site where I was trying to check a rewards balance for a credit card or something and I always got an error saying something about how it was temporarily unavailable (very much like the error you mentioned). This went on for weeks or even months when I'd try it occasionally. In the end, it was a browser issue but because of the non-helpful error, I figured it was a glitch on their end. Stupid. (Well, it was stupidity on their end . . .) It makes their site and service look bad, as if something is "temporarily unavailable" sometimes for a great while, when simply switching to a different browser would work (or, you know, them doing a decent job of coding).

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

If the problem is browser incompatibility, I find it's usually best to jump straight to IE. And even then, sometimes it will work with one version of IE but not another. We have HR software at work that only works with IE 9 and 10. IE 8 was too old, but IE 11 had problems too. My company is actually BLOCKING downloads of IE 11 because it blows up one of the required corporate web apps!

"I was trying to check a rewards balance for a credit card or something"

Was it by any chance American Airlines?

[laurel]

Not American Airlines, possibly Chase or Wells Fargo rewards system I think. Or Best Buy. Hmm. Someone big that should know better, to be sure.

[vanaabegra.livejournal.com]

I tried to use it (IE 11) today for a similar reason - I expected a button / link should be showing up on a site. However, IE could not even manage to load its default home page (msn.com) without issues. I could not even stop and I could not get to the settings or even the "about".

I had to find the link to start IE without add-ins. It seems that other browsers at least let you get to that stuff without puking.

And yes, we had to write custom code because a client's standard was IE 8, so we needed to code around its deficiencies when Chrome and Firefox (and Safari) just worked fine.

The only legitimate use for IE is to download a better browser.
Companies that code web apps that are IE only are lazy and a disgrace to their profession.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I figured out how to downgrade to a lower version of Internet Explorer, if you want to go back to IE 9 or 10 (which seems to be the best bet for Works With Everything).

You have to do it through the Microsoft Updates management center. Somewhere in the long list of all the updates that have ever been applied will be the current version of IE. Uninstall that update, reboot and it rolls back to the previous version. I was able to use this method to roll all the way back to IE8, a version that had never even been installed on this system.

[quadong.livejournal.com]

Isn't IE's market share like 20% now? How could anyone think they could get away with only testing on it?