I would assume so, since the notice when they upgraded
stated so and apologized for any inconvenience.
*shrugs*
That sounds like the bank telling the customers what they want. It
doesn't necessarily mean that the customers do want it, and they are
still unlikely to change banks if it was not there so long as they can
successfully do their banking business. While a requirement that they
wait half an hour to download the latest version of some browsers prior
to doing what they had previously been able to do instantly may
encourage people to change banks (assuming the market include at least
one that has employed developers who know how to implement the bells and
whistles as optional extras)
The benefit for the bank of online banking seems to be that it enables
them to do an increasing proportion of their business in a way that does
not require that they employ large numbers of people to sit behind desks
in branches handling transactions in person. To that end maximising the
potential user base for their online services would seem like the best
approach to maximising their return.
A small example from my own (intranet) experience - a form
to ask for help. The form is created on the fly, with elements
created based on previous choices. ...
<snip>
The users like it because it works. But it only works because you know
enough about the Intranet users, there set-ups and browsers to know that
what needs to be done to ensure that it works.
On the Internet things will never be that simple. I particularly like
the way that MSDN is authored so that when I visit it with IE it assumes
that it can run ActiveX, but it can't because I don't allow scripting of
ActiveX over the internet (by anyone). It demonstrates that even
Microsoft cannot cope with the configurability of their own browser and
makes the site more usable with Mozilla (where at least they recognise
that they cannot expect to be able to run ActiveX).
In all cases, if the developers understood their jobs they could provide
a functional base of HTML and server-side scripts that would work for
everyone and still have the DHTML enhancements for those that could take
advantage of them (even when that would require a default configuration
of the latest versions of maybe two browsers).
Richard.
