Sites that require Internet Explorer

[Owen Townend]

2009/1/25 Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com>:
> 2009/1/25 Robert Parker <rlp1938 at gmail.com>:
>> The Australian Tax Office officials designing what type of online
>> input they will accept are either completely stupid or have been
>> bribed by Microsoft to prevent using FOSS solutions for data input
>> from their taxpayers.
>>
>
> Being a commonwealth nation, I think that is actually illegal.
>
> --
> Dotan Cohen

Hey,
 I wouldn't chalk this up to malicious intent, simple ignorance would
easily explain it.
 The annoyance with the ATO is that IIRC it isn't IE that it requires,
it's _windows_ as it is actually an installed tax application
('e-tax') and it doesn't play well with wine.
 There was a recent article[0] (dec) that shows there's not much hope
in the near future either.  On the other hand there are pen and paper
tax forms available in all post offices and post offices are prevalent
enough that it shouldn't be a _huge_ hassle to find one.  Just more so
than the digital method.
 When e-tax was started I imagine that the large majority of users
didn't know that there _was_ an alternative to Windows.  While that
may still be true, the minority is growing in size and is gaining
voices.

On (original) topic though, I agree that contacting the company
directly is in order, not the listed 'contact us' details which may go
to a web services company but to the actual management. 'I would like
to give you business but am unable to as your web site will only work
for a subset of your potential customers'... etc.  Word it as them
_losing money_ that tends to get attention.

Cheers
Owen.

Footnotes:
--
[0] http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Macs-Linux-to-wait-as-ATO-tenders-e-tax/0,130061733,339293572,00.htm

Choice quotes:
'The software for the e-tax system has been written in a mix of
Delphi, VB, C++, C# and VB.NET'
...
'a spokesperson said that getting the system working for non-Windows
operating systems was not a mandatory requirement, only "identified as
a consideration".'