you paid how much for this!?

Nik Jul 6

My Victoria is the new “campus portal” we’re all being forced to use at our university. It’s powered by some software from Sungard Higher Education - a company with offices in Florida, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Good on Vic for supporting New Zealand.

I’d perhaps be less bitter if the thing wasn’t terrible. There are just so many things that could be so easily improved. Rather than write another iPayroll rant however, I think I’ll just show you a representative screen.

My Victoria: Browser not supported

Yep, that’s what I see when I visit My Victoria. I’m using Firefox 3, which is relatively new, but you’ll note that the “Supported Browser” list excludes Firefox 2.x and Safari 3, and that the system still has “some issues” with Internet Explorer 7 (which is over a year old).

It actually works “fine” for me once I click “continue”. Does it really need a whitelist? Perhaps they need to think about using bug detection rather than browser sniffing.

I’m afraid to think about how much Victoria paid for this.

what other people thought

Nik - did you read how much SPARC paid for their web presence? Twitter chatter puts the deal at $5.5mill this year - go figure.

And of course they’d not use a local provider - tall poppy syndrome and all!

Ben Kepes, July 6th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

@ben: Sad, is there something wrong with the New Zealand ecosystem that means these kind of Government deals go overseas?

Nik, July 6th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

Pathetic

James, July 6th, 2008 at 3:26 pm

Valid point but I would point out that Sungard does have some links to NZ and their Financials line of business is one of the biggest IT employers in Christchurch

Dan, July 6th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

Nik, you need to give some credit to a system development that at least tries to help out the lowest common user. At least they allow you to continue on regardless of your supported status. What would be more concerning would be if VUW were to ignore any support calls logged by other FF3 users (I’m assuming you’ve given them direct feedback?). Give them a month or so, they might already be testing compatibility - this does take a while to get through the SDLC. Patience young one :)

Bill, July 6th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

…and as an aside, it does actually support FF2.

Bill, July 6th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

@bill: I seriously doubt they wrote the software just for Vic. They’ve had a year since IE7, and nearly that long since FF2 to test and update their whitelist.

Lowest common denominator or not, browser sniffing is a pathetic excuse for poor programming (with the notable exception of blocking IE6).

FF2 is not on the supported browser list, even though it may be supported.

Nik, July 6th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

That browser check really annoys me also.

Sam, July 10th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

have your say