Note on Kawasaki.com

Yesterday, I was unable to view the parts diagram for a carburetor assembly on Kawasaki.com - They have made some recent enhancements to the site that make you use even more keystrokes to get to this point. The page came up as well as SOME of the stuff that should appear but no parts diagram. I contacted their tech help via email and was surprised when I got a call back. Their parts diagrams WILL NOT WORK with Firefox Mozilla 2.0.0.12 (or any Mozilla version) according to their tech guy because that browser isn't support. He said it had too many security issues. You must use IE... didn't ask him about Netscape. If you are a Firefox user, you might want to have IE on your system as well.

Hmmm...I'll try when I get home...I was up on the Kawasaki site while at home looking at diagrams several days ago (using Mozilla)...man, I really dislike IE and have been really pleased with Mozilla.

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Mcdroid wrote:

Hmmm...I'll try when I get home...I was up on the Kawasaki site while at home looking at diagrams several days ago (using Mozilla)...man, I really dislike IE and have been really pleased with Mozilla.

This lack of features discovered by WG is no more than a week old. Well, I have sooo much trouble with IE that I guess I won't be frequenting Mother Kaw very much any more...if they have trouble with Mozilla, then their IT people are probably idiots. BUT, I have a microfiche reader, microfiches of most of the KZ's and a CD of the Kawasaki site with a searchable database of ALL Kawasaki's through 1998.

That's all fine and dandy so long as the customer is using some version of MS Windows. But, why, pray tell, in this day of Web cross platform compatibility becoming the rule instead of the exception is Kawasaki going this route? Onward backward!!

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Fortunately, I'm not planning a bike purchase any time soon so maybe they'll cure this idiocy in due course.

Looks longingly over to Triumph where they still seem to have some common sense. :dry:

Kaw doesn't do its website... some third party does. Click on or hover over the HELP button... it gives you an email address to send your queries to something at snapon.com - SNAPON.COM is the tool company. Can Kaw have outsourced their website to SnapOn tools? Strange world.

When I spoke to the engineer, he said they won't try and make the Kaw site work with Firefox because of all the security issues (that Firefox has). I also complained that it took a lot more keystrokes to get to the parts diagrams...he said he would pass it on. On the positive side, I did get a phone call and spoke to a human who actually worked on the site.

Guys, in my day job, I manage a group within our company that operates a website where customers can go online and design and order their own ID cards. Our system also requires that customers use IE as their web browser. For us, it was't because of any "security issues" that we don't support Firefox. Rather, at the time we designed the software, in order for us to bring a sophisticated graphic design system into a Web interface, a lot of the back end programming tools we had to use were not supported in non-Microsoft environments. So we require that our customers access our system using IE.

We have had discussions about redesigning the engine to bring in support for these other browsers. The tools to do that are now available. But it would require nearly a complete ground-up rebuild. In other words, $$$$$. And we just aren't willing to make the investment it would take to do that just so a minority of users who refuse to use IE out of principle can access our system.

I'm guessing that the people who run the Kaw site are facing similar issues, and have made a similar decision.

Post edited by: Skyman, at: 2008/02/15 13:08

Skyman wrote:

Guys, in my day job, I manage a group within our company that operates a website where customers can go online and design and order their own ID cards. Our system also requires that customers use IE as their web browser. For us, it was't because of any "security issues" that we don't support Firefox. Rather, at the time we designed the software, in order for us to bring a sophisticated graphic design system into a Web interface, a lot of the back end programming tools we had to use were not supported in non-Microsoft environments. So we require that our customers access our system using IE.

We have had discussions about redesigning the engine to bring in support for these other browsers. The tools to do that are now available. But it would require nearly a complete ground-up rebuild. In other words, $$$$$. And we just aren't willing to make the investment it would take to do that just so a minority of users who refuse to use IE out of principle can access our system.

I'm guessing that the people who run the Kaw site are facing similar issues, and have made a similar decision.<br><br>Post edited by: Skyman, at: 2008/02/15 13:08

I'll buy what you said, except that Firefox worked well until last week...until a 'decision maker' opted to designate Firefox as non-supported. :S

If you install the User Agent Switcher Add-on for Firefox does the Kawasaki site work again? Sometimes the Web designers take the easy way out and just check the browser ID. You can then set FF to lie to the Web server to tell it that the browser is IE when in fact it's not.

No matter whether Kawasaki outsourced their parts module to a competent team or not, the whole thing reflects on Kawasaki as it's their site and their parts diagrams. The third party does not operate in a vacuum nor without input and direction from the company that contracted them.

Also the FF "security issues" response is B.S. from an obvious Microsoftie. It's more likely due to the fact that FF users can install add-ons that effectively block undesired content (ads, spy applets and such) while allowing the desired content. Worse than the inconvenience to PC users, the change locks out much of the mobile Web access platforms most of which do not run MS Windows or IE. Regardless of the excuses, in 2008 this is a myopic and stupid move on Kawasaki's part and it pains me to say that.

Skyman wrote:

...And we just aren't willing to make the investment it would take to do that just so a minority of users who refuse to use IE out of principle can access our system....

Okay, it took me a few minutes to calm down before I responded to this.

At my company, and at my home, are Linux and Mac machines. And I'm not willing to make the investment in time to build another PC (with IE) to use services that people like you -- who refuse to acknowledge the business demand of certain minorities -- offer.

Fine with me. If you haven't already started building your services for something other than IE, then you've already missed the boat on a already-huge, and ever-growing, customer base.

But don't worry. People like me -- the minority -- have already made great strides in making our tools work better with yours -- the *current* majority -- and accommodate the incompatibility...

...but thank you for keeping us on our toes...

:whistle: :laugh:

EDIT: ...and another thing... How do you know I refuse to eat green beans "out of principle"? I JUST DON'T LIKE GREEN BEANS...



Post edited by: Biquetoast, at: 2008/02/15 18:08

The site does still work with Firefox (on Debian Linux, no less) so long as a trick or two are employed.

When you drill through the model selection pages and the pop-up window is finally opened, you'll probably find that your cursor just clocks and clocks. If you click on the text box at the top middle of the page, you can edit that text. For example, when I drilled through to the page it showed KZ650-D2.

Here is the trick, edit the text to just be KZ650 and then hit Enter (or click the green arrow to the right of the text entry box). You should now be presented with a list of all the 650 models in the left hand frame. Click on the link of the model you want to view and the links of the various sections of the parts manual should show in the right hand frame. I also tried other model strings such as Z1, ZX10, ZX6, etc.

Clicking on a section will show those parts. I found that the frame that holds the image may be shrunk and I was able to drag it down using the frame separator. I also tried the print control and it printed the image and the parts list.

I tried to see if the User Agent Switcher made any difference and I found no difference. Most likely this is a Javascript issue the Mozilla folks could fix if they knew about it.

Geesh... Nate, I don't have the patience to go through EIGHT pages after clicking on Parts Diagrams from the home page (before actually getting to the parts diagrams) and then go through the editing chore. I will just keep a copy of IE on my system I guess. I also have to use IE when I sell on eBay. Their wysiwyg text editor for making a description of what you are selling doesn't work with Firefox. You are given a simple html editor instead where you have to use html code directly and life is too short to learn that junk in order to sell a carburetor in an auction.