Qantas has spruced up the design of its web site, but the process apparently didn’t include any proper testing in Firefox.
The site still has the same features, but has revamped the colour scheme, fonts and icons used. The image at the top shows menus rendering (correctly) on the new site in Internet Explorer 8. The image below is the same menus in Firefox 3.5 — an ugly mess, basically. The links work, but they’re much harder to work with.
I’m sure Qantas has more IE users than any other browser, but would it be that hard to get this right? Hopefully even as I write, a CSS boffin at the airline is trying to fix the problem.
mr-crash
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 4:34 PMSeems to be ok for me in FF3.5.1 now… Maybe they fixed it already? Maybe one of the Qantas IT staff reads lifehacker lol
Ben
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:16 PMInaccessible without JavaScript enabled too! Naughty!
Carter Creative Design
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:22 PMMust of updated the site pretty quick… Looks like the web designers/developers have noticed as the site won’t load!
mchris2
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:33 PMA typical reflection of the Aussie large business mentality. Support Microsoft and IE. Stuff the rest.
the Odd one
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM“qantas.com is currently unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience.
This is a temporary page that enables you to access key functionality.” – http://www.qantas.com.au/australia.html
I can only get that message along with a butt ugly “temporary” page.
The word ‘fail’ comes to mind.
Devz
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:57 PMFile not found.
Shane
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:58 PMLooks like it’s down again! However, I really prefer the streamlined look of the “essentials” page. Wonder if it’s accessible by an unlisted url normally?
“qantas.com is currently unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience.
This is a temporary page that enables you to access key functionality.”
poedgirl
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 6:14 PMI’ve been noticing lately that most of the images on Lifehacker AU and Gizmodo AU posts don’t work, I just attempted to right-click and “view image” on one of them and got a 403 Forbidden error…
Simon
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 6:17 PMNope, still ugly as all hell for me.
Nicole Leeson
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 7:19 PMHi Angus,
I look after the Online Customer Experience at Qantas. When we test our site we do a full test on a range of operating systems and browsers which includes Firefox. I have checked the above and can’t seem to replicate the problem but please let me know if you continue to experience problems.
Cheers
Johnson
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 8:38 PMLooks fine to me.
If it’s a recent change, maybe you just had an old copy of their CSS cached? Sure, it’s poor form to not be using cache-busters (or similar) with a new version of the website, but it’s certainly not the same category as not designing for Firefox.
tom
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:32 PMno good in Safari on Mac either. I can see the site but the when I try to make a booking I can’t see the date selector.
I am amazed they didn’t cross test this site in modern browsers… given that Mac users usually are considered high value consumer I am just amazed how they could this mistake.
tom
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:36 PManother thing I just noticed is that when you view the site in Firefox you can’t actually select the booking class in the booking form as it doesn’t even show.
I guess that was that… perhaps Qantas doesn’t want Mac / Safari/ Firefox users as their customers.
Wobble
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:57 PMLooks fine on my FF 3.5.1 on a Win7 64bit PC.
Ex-Qantas
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 10:06 AMQantas have outsourced all their IT functions. The new web site has probably been built in India by IBM, who only want to support Microsoft.
Outsourcing = quick, cheap, reliable – pick only two
FanOfLifehacker
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 8:27 PMHeck, there is the Victorian Government IT website which proclaims it’s the Centre of IT Excellence, but go there with Firefox and you get “This web site is optimised for Internet Explorer version 5.0″.
(http://cenitexnews.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/i-blame-aaron-chambers/)
gjh
Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 12:53 AMi can forgive css/design issues, but the fact that database queries constantly result in total errors is absolutely unforgivable. but a pretty typical reflection of the company.