I've complained before about how much NatWest online banking sucks and NatWest online banking stupidly requiring broken browsers, so I really should just STFU and switch banks ... the difficulty is that it's not just me that would need to switch, it's also the business and the work colleague. Too much inertia.
For a while I was happy, when I discovered that Firefox amazingly was now supported. Life was good. And then, Natwest did something unbelievably stupid - they broke their HTML by removing the hrefs from their hyperlinks.
Let me say that again, slowly. NatWest stopped using URLs in their hyperlinks.
Ok, fair enough, I've done that before, using the old onClick trick on my hrefs to do something in Javascript instead of making a simple link. But no, NatWest have gone one step further. Those inane half-wit morons have removed the anchor tags completely! Take a look at this:
<td width=162 class=MenubgOff onclick="showNav('account')" onmouseover="this.className='MenubgOn';showMenu('accountmenu')" onmouseout="this.className='MenubgOff';" title="Access Information about your accounts such as account balances and statements" valign="middle">&38;38;nbsp; <SPAN class="arrows">4</SPAN><SPAN class="Menu">Account Info</SPAN></td>
I am in awe of whichever idiot decided this was the way they should do their links. It seems like it's written in a deliberately obfuscated and flakey way to ensure it will break on as many browsers as possible.
I decided to make a stand, and called NatWest's read-a-standard-fault-resolution-script-helpdesk, to see if I could get them to understand the sheer incomprehensible enormity and stupidity of what they'd done. Their response? "I'm sorry sir, we don't support Firefox because it has not been released yet, it's still only at version nought point something".
They don't support Firefox because it's only at 0.9, not 1.0.
They do support Internet Explorer, because it's at 6.0, even though everybody and their dog are recommending you abandon it because of the security holes in it. I am aghast.
Posted by savs at September 16, 2004 11:20 AM