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Why are some websites, such as the FAFSA (federal financial aid for students) website or the BNY Mellon website, denying access to users running Firefox versions newer than 3.6?

  • 2 replies
  • 15 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by hoarmouth

cfountain8
cfountain8
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Why are some websites that are important to many people, such as the FAFSA (federal financial aid for students) website or the Bank of New York Mellon website, not permitting access to computers running Firefox versions newer than 3.6 when Mozilla is claiming that 5.0 is more stable and secure?

The following information was displayed in regards to this issue - https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/errors?page=incompatibleBrowser

"An Incompatible Browser Has Been Detected: Your Web browser is not supported by our Web site. You must use a Compliant Web Browser - Standard* to view our site properly. We recommend you upgrade to the latest version of your browser according to your Operating System.

Supported Mozilla Firefox browsers: Windows XP - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Windows Vista - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Windows 7 - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Macintosh Operating System 10.5 - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Macintosh Operating System 10.4 - Mozilla Firefox 3.6

  • Compliant Web Browser - Standard

For the past few years, every major Web browser released has been built around a set of open standards designated by the World Wide Web Consortium, a non-profit organization charged with overseeing the continuing development of the Web. What this means is that one piece of code now looks the same on every modern browser, whether it be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or others. The majority of our users are using these modern browsers, so we can present content which is optimized for them. "

Why are some websites that are important to many people, such as the FAFSA (federal financial aid for students) website or the Bank of New York Mellon website, not permitting access to computers running Firefox versions newer than 3.6 when Mozilla is claiming that 5.0 is more stable and secure? The following information was displayed in regards to this issue - https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/errors?page=incompatibleBrowser "An Incompatible Browser Has Been Detected: Your Web browser is not supported by our Web site. You must use a Compliant Web Browser - Standard* to view our site properly. We recommend you upgrade to the latest version of your browser according to your Operating System. Supported Mozilla Firefox browsers: Windows XP - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Windows Vista - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Windows 7 - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Macintosh Operating System 10.5 - Mozilla Firefox 3.5.x and 3.6.x Macintosh Operating System 10.4 - Mozilla Firefox 3.6 *Compliant Web Browser - Standard For the past few years, every major Web browser released has been built around a set of open standards designated by the World Wide Web Consortium, a non-profit organization charged with overseeing the continuing development of the Web. What this means is that one piece of code now looks the same on every modern browser, whether it be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or others. The majority of our users are using these modern browsers, so we can present content which is optimized for them. "

All Replies (2)

the-edmeister
the-edmeister
  • Moderator
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That is a question for those websites to answer. Firefox 4.0 was released almost 4 months ago, IMO more than enough time for those 2 websites to verify that Firefox 4 & 5 are compliant with W3C standards.

To be able to access that FAFSA website, my advice is to install the Portable Firefox 3.6.19 version to your hard drive. It won't affect your other Firefox installation.
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/localization#legacy36

hoarmouth
hoarmouth
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You can also use the User Agent RG extension to change your user agent to IE7 when accessing those sites, it's what I do. I say IE7 because I've found it works with any site, while some still don't work with IE8 or Firefox 4:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-rg/