I logged into Zecco yesterday and noticed the site was broke. I was using Safari. The layout looked a little different (Most of it was broke), so I tried opening it in Firefox. Aha! It works, and it had been changed. I sent a nice email off to a contact person listed on the Zecco.com site.
The new layout is horrible for Safari. I haven’t tried it on my iphone yet, but it’s probably pretty similar.
Ok, so maybe not terribly nice, but as you can see from the screenshots, not un-truthful either. The following reply I received surprised the hell out of me.
Hello Buckley,
Let me start with the short answer: Zecco does not support Safari. The reason is this:
Zecco supports the following four dominant OS/Browser combinations:
Windows + IE6
Windows + IE7
Windows + Firefox
Mac + FirefoxWe have tried to also support other (Mac) browsers, like Safari and Camino for instance. However, optimizing HTML code for these often means sub optimization for the four dominant OS/Browser combinations.
So please switch to Mac + Firefox.
Hope that helps. Thanks,
Zecco Editor
PS: I am a Mac and iPhone user too.
What really surprises me is that this is a fairly large broker who depends on it’s website for it’s business. We’re not talking about some small, short sighted “web development” house that is just ignoring a large portion of mac users.
It’s really a shame these days to not be cross browser. It’s one thing to not support some weird, hardly used browser, but Safari makes up most of the Mac users. The worst part is that it easier to develop for Safari and Firefox and gracefully degrade for IE. They support Firefox, but can’t make the layout work with Safari?
On the mobile front it’s worse now the iPhone is out. This is the most capable browser on a mobile phone. Before you Google geeks scoff, android uses webkit, as does Nokia highends.
It also says they support the four dominant browsers [used on their site]. Of course Safari will not show up there, it doesn’t work! How about, use web standards that degrade gracefully for stupid browsers (IE) instead of “optimizing” (whatever that means in his terms).
With that same type of thinking we as a society would not have anything new. Could you see any would be car company at the turn of the 20th century creating a new product and investing the time and money to sell it when no one was using cars. Of course no one was using cars, there weren’t any available yet.
It’s this kinda of reasoning that should be illegal for accessibility’s sake. It’s this sort of reasoning that keeps a 6 year old browser in the mainstream. No one wants to switch to a better browser when developers aren’t whole-heartedly supporting newer technologies. When I say newer, I mean 3-4 years old. When moron web developers who don’t know how to create a cross browser site, they encourage moron, Microsoft Systems Admins to discourage anything other than IE for their users just because they like to use a site made by inept web developers.
I’m surprised by this attitude mainly because the company runs like a web 2.0 company. They don’t charge for standard trades and they make their money on advertising and premium services. Hell, they even have a social networking section with an investing twist. Maybe I can help make enough waves to change this deficiency in the Zecco.com website.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Saturday, 22. December 2007
Hello again Buckley.
Hate is a strong word, so I feel some further clarification is needed. Zecco does not hate Safari. The challenge for web companies is to deal with the many ways different browsers handle the same HTML. This is not as easy as one would think. Even Mozilla, the maker of Firefox and Camino, explained at a recent Lunch 2.0 meeting why Firefox and Camino do not perform similarly on a Mac.
That is why Zecco has made the practical decision to focus on the vast majority of OS/Browser combinations first. Safari unfortunately is not (yet) as widely used as IE and Firefox. Our fast growing company will hopefully soon have the additional resources required to expand the range browsers covered.
Happy holidays!
Zecco Editor
Saturday, 22. December 2007
Hate is a strong word, and is only used as emphasis. It’s a headline to grab attention, Nothing more. Apparently it’s doing it’s job. Thanks for reading.
Monday, 28. January 2008
zecco not working in safari 3 is a bummer…
i have firefox too so it doesn’t matter that much but
the new design is just worse.
1. no alignments
2. the boxes are not evenly spaced
3. what on earth is that half cut $0 doing there? (above trading menu), you just have to change the background…(i’m sorry that made me mad)
4. font sizes change after clicking another side menu
5. inner frames are not adjusted to size
6. button locations are not consistent
7. man i wish clicking on a stock in the watchlist opened the chart
8. zecco, if you guys can make a version that works and is optimized for the iphones, optimized for the screen of the iphone and then market that…all the iphone users that trade are yours (i’m sure it’s well over a million users)
anyone feel the same way? care to add more stuff?
i hope the site improves too…so much potential
Wednesday, 13. February 2008
It’s even worse. Using a mac, i can’t cancel an ongoing ACH payment using either browser–the cancel button never shows up. I had to call in to modify the payment. I’m a web developer myself, and i think this is absurd.
Wednesday, 13. February 2008
Maybe that’s the answer Dave. If everyone calls in it will increase their operation costs and maybe they’ll get a clue and develop a proper web app. I’m sure it’s some minor CSS changes and maybe a javascript change or two.
Sunday, 24. February 2008
Zecco is trying to play this off as some huge challenge, being cross-platform, when the fact of the matter is that they’ve simply hired the wrong designers/programmers. This is evident from their backwards (and I’m certain non-standard) CSS implementation which favors noncompliant browsers over compliant ones. If their site wasn’t laid out so ineptly I bet they wouldn’t be finding so many roadblocks to compliance. What’s the deal with that white half opacity layer that sits for a brief moment after you log in? All signs point to an inexperienced team of web developers at Zecco.
Wednesday, 19. March 2008
I have the account with zecco n I have iPhone. Site looks okey but the problem is when you put some order to excute.