A few minutes ago I was reminded of a situation that has been allowed to continue on the Government of Newfoundland website that is completely unacceptable.
While the Department of Government Services provides online access to its Registry of Companies, one can only access the database if they are using Internet Explorer 6.
In case you aren't up on these things, Internet Explorer 6 was first released in 2001. According to the Wiki article about Internet Explorer 6 suggests that "Microsoft now considers IE6 to be an obsolete product and recommends that users upgrade to Internet Explorer 8." A Microsoft website dedicated to eradicating Internet Explorer 6 goes are far as to say "Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye." This same site also suggests that only 2% of Canadians use this browser.
So to get back to my original point, by allowing access to the database exclusively through an outdated browser the Department of Government services is effectively failing to provide access to this data about Newfoundland companies to the vast majority of the Canadian population. That this situation has been allowed to persist is completely unacceptable.
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Printing in Firefox 3: Where is Mozilla?
It seems that a number of people have been having problems printing with Firefox 3. I know that I started having problems today when I was automatically upgraded to 3.0.1. The problem that I experienced, and that others seem to be having, is that instead of the text printing it is transformed into a multitude of seemingly randomly organized characters.
Not surprisingly this has been a hot topic in the Firefox support forums since June, 2008. Some such threads have had almost 3000 views and many replies.
More striking than there being a problem with a new piece of software is that this particular problem is not noted by Mozilla in the "Known Issues" section of their Firefox 3.0.1 Release Notes. I find it peculiar that something of this magnitude would slip by without note, particularly when it has the ability to drastically diminish the
productivity of users.
While there seem to be patched-together fixes that have been discovered by users (and that work for some users) I have yet to see any evidence that Mozilla has issued a formal fix, or even officially acknowledged the problem. Though it may not be called for, this situation is making me a little more hesitant when it comes to whole-hearted support for Mozilla and their products (as good as they may seem at first glance). Hopefully they can get on this problem and regain my confidence (something that could largely be accomplished by an acknowledgement of the problem.
Not surprisingly this has been a hot topic in the Firefox support forums since June, 2008. Some such threads have had almost 3000 views and many replies.
More striking than there being a problem with a new piece of software is that this particular problem is not noted by Mozilla in the "Known Issues" section of their Firefox 3.0.1 Release Notes. I find it peculiar that something of this magnitude would slip by without note, particularly when it has the ability to drastically diminish the
productivity of users.
While there seem to be patched-together fixes that have been discovered by users (and that work for some users) I have yet to see any evidence that Mozilla has issued a formal fix, or even officially acknowledged the problem. Though it may not be called for, this situation is making me a little more hesitant when it comes to whole-hearted support for Mozilla and their products (as good as they may seem at first glance). Hopefully they can get on this problem and regain my confidence (something that could largely be accomplished by an acknowledgement of the problem.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
A Few Quick Notes 107
-Today is another rainy day in Newfoundland (or at least St. John’s). The weather managed to change from just about perfect, or even on the hot side of things, to overcast, humid, rainy all in one night. Hopefully things will have dried up a little by the time I have to walk to work tomorrow morning.
-Though I did not have a particularly good reason to do so, I baked my first coffee cake this morning. After a quick search for the recipe card I was able to find what I was looking for. As all of the ingredients are pretty common I did not have to head over to the store before the baking process started. The only problem I encountered, and this hardly counts as a problem, was that about half way through the process I realized that my mother has been baking double batches of this cake for the past twenty-something years. As I had only added enough ingredients for a single batch my cake turned out to be much smaller than I had originally expected. Aside from the size, the cake turned out quite nicely. So far I have managed to finish off about a third of the cake, though I imagine that I probably will have to switch to a slightly more substantive food in the near future.
-Running out of propane is one of the more frustrating summer experiences. Several times this summer I have gone out to start up the barbeque only to find that it would not ignite. After a few minutes of fiddling around with the tank and nozzles it usually becomes apparent what the problem is. In this case I was a little thrown because some gas escaped, giving me the false sense that an empty tank was not the problem. Anyway, after eliminating all other possibilities and lifting what felt like an empty tank, I was pretty sure that that was it for my desire to barbeque last night.
-For the first time in about a year I was able to break out my Pictionary easels. Five of us engaged in a few exciting and vigorous games. In my opinion, Dougal’s drawing of civilian by first drawing a solider and then crossing it out to indicate a ‘not-solider’ stands as one of the better drawing sessions of the night. As usual, there were also a few correct guesses that occurred so quickly and with such sparse drawings that it is hard to believe that anything could have even been realistically guessed.
-While typing that last section I learned that Word does not recognize the name ‘Dougal.’ While I know that this isn’t the world’s most common name, I certainly would have thought that it merited at least a degree of recognition by the Microsoft empire, particularly when they recognize ‘McDougall.’
-This past week was a relatively unsuccessful trivia week. We managed to do quite poorly at the Rose and Thistle. The large number of pop culture questions really did us in. At Bitters I managed to be only 2.5 points out of second place. Unfortunately, we (at my proding) ended up making a few last minute changes that lost us a few points, though not enough to cost us the victory.
-Though I did not have a particularly good reason to do so, I baked my first coffee cake this morning. After a quick search for the recipe card I was able to find what I was looking for. As all of the ingredients are pretty common I did not have to head over to the store before the baking process started. The only problem I encountered, and this hardly counts as a problem, was that about half way through the process I realized that my mother has been baking double batches of this cake for the past twenty-something years. As I had only added enough ingredients for a single batch my cake turned out to be much smaller than I had originally expected. Aside from the size, the cake turned out quite nicely. So far I have managed to finish off about a third of the cake, though I imagine that I probably will have to switch to a slightly more substantive food in the near future.
-Running out of propane is one of the more frustrating summer experiences. Several times this summer I have gone out to start up the barbeque only to find that it would not ignite. After a few minutes of fiddling around with the tank and nozzles it usually becomes apparent what the problem is. In this case I was a little thrown because some gas escaped, giving me the false sense that an empty tank was not the problem. Anyway, after eliminating all other possibilities and lifting what felt like an empty tank, I was pretty sure that that was it for my desire to barbeque last night.
-For the first time in about a year I was able to break out my Pictionary easels. Five of us engaged in a few exciting and vigorous games. In my opinion, Dougal’s drawing of civilian by first drawing a solider and then crossing it out to indicate a ‘not-solider’ stands as one of the better drawing sessions of the night. As usual, there were also a few correct guesses that occurred so quickly and with such sparse drawings that it is hard to believe that anything could have even been realistically guessed.
-While typing that last section I learned that Word does not recognize the name ‘Dougal.’ While I know that this isn’t the world’s most common name, I certainly would have thought that it merited at least a degree of recognition by the Microsoft empire, particularly when they recognize ‘McDougall.’
-This past week was a relatively unsuccessful trivia week. We managed to do quite poorly at the Rose and Thistle. The large number of pop culture questions really did us in. At Bitters I managed to be only 2.5 points out of second place. Unfortunately, we (at my proding) ended up making a few last minute changes that lost us a few points, though not enough to cost us the victory.
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