Cornell Finch

Blog Accessibility or Lack Of

Having a few minute spare this afternoon I thought I would take a couple and wander through the forums at Appdeploy, a site dedicated to the re-packaging of software and applications for distribution on your company’s corporate machines. Reading this thread about the imaging (taking an archive copy of a PC for backup), the conversation mutated into a conversation about sysprep. It’s not something that I’ve ever had cause to need, but with that few minutes spare I thought I’d have a read of the guides that are linked in the last post on that appdeploy thread.

So, like you do I clicked the first link and was greeted with this:

Precondition Failed
We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /2006/02/22/how-to-image-windows-xp-with-ghost-and-sysprep/ on this server.

We have established rules for access to this server, and any person or robot that violates these rules will be unable to access this site.

To resolve this problem, please try the following steps:

Ensure that your computer is free of viruses, Trojan horses, spyware or any other sort of malicious software.
If you are using any sort of personal firewall or browser privacy software, check to ensure that its settings do not cause your web browser to inadvertently violate any of the rules listed below.
If you are behind a Web proxy or corporate firewall, the proxy must conform to the HTTP specification with respect to proxy servers. Contact your network administrator if the trouble persists, or bypass the proxy and connect directly if possible.
Disable any download accelerators you may be using. They don’t speed up your downloads anyway; in most cases, they actually run slower!
If all else fails, try using a different Web browser, such as Firefox.
If you still need assistance, please contact hisham at ranaventures.com.

Ok. I have never seen anything like that before. A couple of points:

1. I am not a robot. I am a human, using the web in the way that humans do.
2. I can’t (as most corporate users can’t) change change my firewall and proxy settings. Further to that, your website isn’t that important to force me to do anything about it.
3. I’m on a corporate machine. Do you really think a download accelerator would be allowed??
4. My machines run a virus check at midday. Every day.

What really irked me was the comment about using a different web browser. Which brings me to my next point. I went to the homepage for the blog and was greeted with this line of text at the top of the screen (click the thumbnail to the left for a larger version):

Internet Explorer is not supported on this website. Please download Firefox by clicking the banner below…

Woah there cowboy! Last time I checked my stats, after the crawlers/bots, Internet Explorer accounted for more than 18% of my 2000 hits per day. That’s 236 hits per day I would miss out on if I didn’t design my blog with IE capabilities included. And that’s exactly what you are doing. We’ll ignore the fact you haven’t posted anything for 3 months.

And telling me to go get Firefox? Come on! I know that Firefox is a great application. I use it at home. I am not allowed to use it at work, hence stuck with IE. Your blog is/was aimed at the IT professional, corporate surfer. Do you not think it would be wise to get some sort of IE compatibility into your blog? Oh, and do something about that Precondition thing.

It might have been a great article. I guess I’ll never know as I won’t be coming back. I wonder how many other people are thinking the same thing.