I need to see some of my payroll information. Fortunately, my company's processing company, ADP provides a convenient web interface for employees -- a "portal," if you will. I opened the URL that their system sent to register for access, using my default browser: Chrome (6.0.472.55) on Mac OS X (10.6.4). I was thwarted with this screen. I highlighted the text at the bottom showing that they correctly parsed the User-Agent header.
Okay, fine. I turned off NoScript temporarily and opened it up in Firefox (3.6.3):
Hey! I thought you said that combo was acceptable. I was able open the link in Safari (5.0.1-6533.17.8). But upon filling in all my user information, I received this response:
Well, that's not very warm and/or fuzzy. Let's try starting over:
Hmm... Not very helpful. When I write applications, I try really hard to provide useful error messages. Although I rarely get any feedback from end users, I have to assume that they have a much more pleasant experience than I had this morning.