Last night I elected to take one an online survey, as I often enjoy doing. This one came via MyPoints, a pretty nifty service that "pays" you points to read advertisements, buy or sign up for things, and, occasionally, take a survey. The survey was prepared by OTX, from whom I have taken surveys before; I'll never know what the topic was, though, because clicking on the entry button brought up the following message:
WARNING: You are using a web browser that is not supported for this survey
Please read carefully...
Although we attempt to make our surveys compatible with as many web browsers and operating systems as possible, this survey currently requires functionality only available in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher (on Windows 98 or higher). If you are using Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, another alternative browser, or an operating system other than Windows 98 or higher, you will not be able to continue with this particular survey
It then gave me a URL that I could paste into IE in order to take the survey. But I did not and will not do that, for a variety of reasons:
First, I don't like IE. That's why I use Firefox.
Second, I don't like their message. Read it again: "Although we attempt to make our surveys compatible with as many web browsers and operating systems as possible, this survey currently requires functionality only available in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher (on Windows 98 or higher)." Huhn?? You "attempt" to make surveys "compatible" with "as many web browsers" as possible…but the survey will work only with this particular (and annoyingly inferior) browser? What the hell kind of sense does that make??
Better they had simply said, "Sorry, this survey is compatible only with the woefully inadequate Internet Exploder web browser, and believe us we're just as torqued off about it as you are. Here's the URL to paste into IE if you think you're up to it."
Spare me all that we-make-every-attempt blather when, obviously, you have not!
