[Discuss] UVic's new portal now available to students, unless they use Firefox

[David Bronaugh]

Adam Parkin wrote:
> So UVic has launched a new online portal service for students, the 
> e-mail I received outlining the servies is given below.  BUT, Firefox 
> is not one of the supported browsers, and upon going to the main 
> USource page (https://usource.uvic.ca)  you are greeted with a nice 
> "Unsupported browser" blurb.  So far as I can tell you can browse the 
> site fine with FF, but it does seem odd to me that the fastest 
> growing, arguably most secure, and most popular browser amongst the 
> students I know is unsupported.
If you read the list, you would notice that Mozilla 1.7 -is- supported, 
and considering it is essentially identical, there is not a support 
issue. The university simply needs to add Firefox to their list of 
supported browsers.

Nonetheless, the nasty message makes me feel a little bit pissy too.
> Why is the University so anti-OSS?  OpenOffice isn't installed in any 
> of the Windows labs on campus (the only lab I know of with OO is the 
> Linux lab in ELWB215, and even then it's a very old version of OO), 
> Firefox is installed in the Windows labs, but it's an older version 
> (pre 1.5) and even then students in early CSC courses (100 et al) are 
> strongly encouraged to use IE over FF.  And that lone Linux lab runs a 
> bizarre Linux distro that seems very quirky and unreliable (I've had 
> those machines lock up on me much more often than the Windows 2000 
> machines across the hall).
Yeah, I'm not fond of that crap. The Linux lab is OK now, but not great. 
I hear the new computer science building will feature more UNIX labs...

David