Serpent Web Browser

UPDATE: Shortly after I emailed the above complaint, the bank site has since been working fine on XP Pro SP3 now backward compatible. It was a delightful surprise that they do listen.

 

After many months of pestering my bank regarding this issue, they finally responded and told me I MUST update my OS and browser.... pfffft.

 

Wait, you have this for XP? Where did you find it?

 

It will be rare to have a bank fix such an issue unless it is actually a coding error on their side that will affect a modern browser as well--that's the only reason I think it was solved.

All web sites have a 'minimum browser' requirement and pretty much won't help you unless you're at that minimum. We're out on our own using XP for online stuff today. Even this forum needs an updated browser when other forums I visit that are also using xenforo work fine on older browsers. Go figure.

 

Please don't give up hope (IF you can be bothered). Staff turnover is usually high, by the time you write again, it would be somebody else answering, it might get their attention. Just prepare your case that makes them difficult to refuse. Let them know

1. if they don't make it backward compatible, it makes them look unprofessional (bad for any bank).
2. making it (basic) backward compatible is NOT that difficult if they have proper programmers there

In any case, it makes a financial institution look bad to employ incompetent programmers. Using that as an excuse to not make a web page functional is just pathetic (even though most customers let them get away with the BS). Even web GMAIL has a button to let the user choose HTML or basic display or something like that. How difficult can that be ?! The programmers are paid good money to do their job to meet the customers needs, not the other way around (customers have to work around to suit them?? How ludicrous). A good programmer will use logic to cover all eventualities when writing a program. For example, they can't just write: if A then B else crash ... as the programmer couldn't give a damn.

Finally, tell them they MUST therefore make it backward compatible.

 

While I completely agree with you, unfortunately backward compatibility has become an afterthought if a thought at all anymore. No one seems to care about the user base they will alienate with their next 'new shiny' and the industry keeps marching on and on in that direction leaving a huge amount of code waste and hardware waste in its path. Reversing this would be important for long-term sustainability, but no one cares about that any more either (hence why the planet is getting mad and will eventually kills us off as a species).

It's a good fight, but it not one that you can even expect to get to the battle field with. You can only do what you can to support the honest developers that do continue to create browsers with xp compatibility in mind.

What really chaps my bottom about the whole 'compatibility' thing is that they will spend time to make mobile friendly sites and 'apps' but nothing for any of the legacy platforms that still exist even when a mobile site could be quickly tweaked just for that purpose. And maybe that's a loophole we have yet to exploit--a browser for xp that appears to be an iphone or android phone browser--that would get around all the 'compatibility' issues except then we would have to update this browser every week.

 

I think I downloaded it from
https://www.slimjet.com/chrome/google-chrome-old-version.php
https://www.slimjet.com/chrome/download-chrome.php?file=win/chrome32_49.0.2623.75.exe

You can scroll down to find the version you want. Hope this helps.

 

Thank you so much! I also realized I had downloaded the slimjet browser a while back and it works great on xp as well.

 

I D/L and installed Chrome Version 49.0.2623.75 on my XP 32bit machine..... same error message from my bank. (need to upgrade to newer browser). So I went through the UPDATE and it installed 49.0.2623.112.... which made no difference.

Did any of you have to make modifications to your Chrome browser to allow login to a bank or other site?

Thanks,
Wolf

 

I've found chrome fails a lot of https sites. For these I will use firefox. However, the slimjet browser I'm testing out seems to be running chrome 50.0.2661.75. I haven't had any luck of it working where chrome fails (sj also fails), but it may be worth a shot since there's a portable version of slimjet you can try out without installing anything.

 

SlimJet I just played with also running on chrome 50.0.2661.75..... no joy.

(the bank keeps telling me I need Chrome 80 at a minimum... which won't install on XP)

Wolf

 

You try ff? I know there's several places that have locked out all the XP browsers so you may be out of luck.

 

Yes.... for quite a while I was able to edit the UserAgent string in FF or Basilisk to login, but now this particular bank is using a different method to block me.

The popup tells me I'm using FF88, but I need FF84 at a minimum so I must upgrade.

So far, no one can tell me which feature of FF (or Basilisk) is betraying me.

Wolf

 

A lot of companies are doing this--disabling browsers that work but aren't a certain version--really stupid imo, but that's where the management of information systems has gone.

I bet you could somehow figure it out using the debugger if you know what you're looking for, but that's above what I can do unfortunately.

 

I am pleased to report that the site fixes they made have been working really well now. They did ignore my complaint in the very beginning. They later sent me a survey invite regarding satisfaction and improvements. I wrote something sarcastic in the survey asking them why asked me "so you can ignore good suggestions again ?" I did explain how easy it would be. After that, the problems were fixed. My guess is that most managers are not technical, so they just assume it would be something too complex or costly to achieve. If a financial institution doesn't even know how to fix the basics, customers should be worried when they log on to their sites (my logic). Competent programmers can fixed these issues. They can display a footnote disclaimer about the aesthetic looks which some of us don't really care. The most important thing is it's functioning properly as it should. Where there is a genuine reason (I can't think of any). they can either find a good if-then-else workaround or explain the imperfection.

I have given some thoughts on what you said, and I agree with you regarding the current trend, when it comes to entertainment. Financial institution sites should be exception to the rule, online banking does not require fancy stuff (basic navigation). Reputable companies should not allow sloppy programming. It's bad for their image. Customers would think, if they couldn't even get the basics right, what other problems would there be that they don't know about.

Perhaps when making the requests, be more specifics on what are not working. Let the managers know this can be done. Just a thought.

 

That's great to hear! I too have seen this happen when companies do another upgrade and something that stopped chrome 45 from working now allows it to work perfectly (sprint *cough* *cough*). But I would also look at this as the exception and just 'getting lucky' and wouldn't expect it to continue in the long run.

You're absolutely right. I'm sure the originators of the internet are completely livid with all the bloated code, 'system requirements' and other such non-sense that is the antithesis of what they originally wanted to design. HTML isn't some fancy programming language and it comes with ready made dialog boxes, radio buttons, drop down boxes and the like--and all the current web sites do not use any of that, doing nothing but causing bloat and compatibility problems in the name of 'pretty' and 'branding'. But it's because of all the mass stupidity of the people using the Internet that this has been allowed. I bet the <10% people that were using the Internet back in the 'finger' days before browsers even existed wish that everyone that crashed their party never came and left them on their own to be happy. The Internet, like everything else humans touch, has degraded into a weapon for cyberwarfare, a conduit for commerce, and a platform for manipulation and online crimes--no wonder the original men who went to the moon were mad at Musk for wanting to return there--they knew we would ruin it.

Before the Internet took off, there was a initiative between businesses that was taking off called EDI, Electronic Data Interchange. The idea was that if A and B are having to exchange information via paper, et al on a regular basis that a dedicated electronic link between them can improve efficiencies by an order of magnitude and would be worth the ROI. It was happening in industries, especially banking and the financial sector and because it was based on dedicated links, interception wasn't an issue.

Once the Internet came about, the idea was to use that as the transport versus the dedicated link. A lot of times, it was slower, not as reliable, etc, but in other situations like EDI across the world, it was the only way to do it at a reasonable cost. Eventually, this evolved to the point where dedicated links were cut and WANs were recreated using IPsec VPN tunnels that run over the Internet.

This is all fine and dandy until the payloads running over the Internet now are juicy targets for anyone that wants to try to steal, hack, or otherwise interfere with the information being transmitted. But instead of going back to dedicated links (which would completely bypass the problem), the neverending cat and mouse game of cybersecurity started and now that nation states have gotten involved, it's a full-on war that's raging every second of the day. And it's a total war with individual citizens as the main target.

So that brings us back to the banks and everyone else that has an online front. They are facing a bigger and bigger task of keeping things secure because of the flawed idea of transferring data over an insecure and public network. And because of the move away from the basics, I'm sure this problem is even harder. Couple that with how programmers are now treated like glorified line workers and the best practices for coding were tossed out over a decade ago, and here we are in the current mess.

And this is why I stick to no online anything when it comes to financial stuff. Send it in the mail where mail theft is still a federal and criminal offense, and no online anything to hack. Places still take checks and stamps are a cheap peace of mind to avert this entire online trainwreck.

But you are absolutely right about requests--a lot of times people know the exact problem, but don't have a solution. I've found that if you present a solution with the problem, there's a 90% chance that at some point they will do it.

 

To Samir: The phenomenon you describe resonates with us all, just the World we live in. Oh well.

To Imwolf: please do come back and let us know if they do eventually change their ways. You never know.

 

Hello,

You guys may be interested in this

https://msfn.org/board/topic/182876-360-extreme-explorer-modified-version/

 

Awesome find! Have you tried it yet? I'm curious how good the portable version is.