firefox users "i can't help you"
i have been using the revenue's online service ros since it went live and am a big fan of it. particularly seeing as the government in its wisdom has decided that a sole trader like me with a relatively modest income still has to register for vat and make a return every two months (you may notice i object to collecting tax on behlaf of the government)
i'm also a big fan of firefox. catching up on admin work yesterday i went to log on to ros to make a couple of vat returns, using firefox as usual, but the java applet needed to log on wouldn't load. rang the helpdesk this morning and was told if i was using firefox "i can't help you". reluctantly fired up internet explorer 7 and of course everything worked fine. i'm still a fan of ros but it seems a bit ridiculous that they don't support the number two browser out there.
That's been the situation for a long time, sadly.
If they support IE7 nowadays, that means they _are_ paying for ongoing browser-compatibility maintainance work -- they should really get the finger out and realise that Firefox is not a niche choice anymore...
Posted by: Justin Mason | January 12, 2007 at 11:33 AM
Odd, FF has worked for me on ROS forever.
Except until this week when it suddenly decided to keep sending me back to the login screen.
Posted by: Conor O'Neill | January 12, 2007 at 01:17 PM
Yeah, it had been working for me for the last couple of years. I asked the guy had they had a change of policy and all he would say is that they don't support it. He wasn't the most dynamic tech support person I've ever talked to ;-)
Posted by: John Collins | January 12, 2007 at 01:26 PM
John, you may want to pick up the FF plugin IETab which lets you use the IE render engine within FF. You can specify which sites automatically load as IE.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/
Posted by: Ben Mosse | January 12, 2007 at 04:15 PM
Cheers Ben, that worked a treat!
Posted by: John Collins | January 12, 2007 at 04:31 PM
John, I've just sussed that the problem is not The Revenue, it is SUN.
I had same issue on IE7 as FF with logging onto ROS this evening. The only thing they have in common is that I recently upgraded to Java SE 6 (aka 1.6). When I reverted to Java 1.5.0_09 both IE and FF started working with ROS again.
Posted by: Conor O'Neill | January 15, 2007 at 07:28 PM
right, this is old but I thought I'd say something.
Firstly, when Java 6 was realised, ROS was caught out. It had no idea about the changes sun were about to make so almost all users who upgraded were unable to log in. After consultations, a fix was released and it should work fine. There was also problems with the applet and the UAC in Vista, which now also have a work-around. ROS does not support Firefox, but Firefox should still work. The problem is, as far as I'm aware, insurance. Ros employees are not insured to give support to Firefox users. Also, its not the #2 browser, Safari is! (Mac users do exist you know!!)
I said firtly, but I don't seem to have a secondly.. hmm.. secondly, don't be cruel to the staffers, they are as still Civil servants earning significantly less than most in a similar position.
Posted by: Tom | September 26, 2007 at 04:51 PM
Tom, missed your comment, but all comments welcome even on old posts. The insurance thing sounds crazy - why would an insurance company give cover for internet explorer but not firefox?
On the safari thing, I'm afraid you are wrong though. Given the Mac installed base, even if 100 per cent of them used Safari it wouldn't touch the Firefox user base. XiTi Monitor released research in July which showed 38.6 per cent of Irish web users using it.
Posted by: John Collins | October 05, 2007 at 10:07 AM