Last week I registered to use a large online database of biological data. So far, so good, I started checking out what I was able to do, how to get data, the whole nine yards. Until I got to the main page, listing most of the database entries. I noticed that Firefox wasn’t showing the vertical scrollbar, so, evidently, I wasn’t able to scroll down and up the page to see the data.

Problems like this happen when the scrollbar is attached to a div instead of being set for the whole page. As a diligent user I dug for the web admin email address and sent a short message with the possible error, including a couple of screenshots, one from “buggy” Firefox and another from Konqueror (which displayed the page with no “errors”). I also mentioned that Firefox under Linux and Windows had problems showing the page.

A couple of days later I receive a polite reply explaining that Firefox isn’t supported to display their pages. Sorry!? I cleared my eyes and then I found a link to the requirements page where I saw a second time that they suggest you to use Internet Explorer 6 or 7. Next thing I did was to check a GPS just to make sure I wasn’t in Punxsutawney.

My humble internet “portal” served by the good guys at GeekISP are accessed by the following browsers
Firefox 49%
Internet Explorer 32%
Safari 10%
Opera 3%

I heard a rumor that it is 2008.