Monday, February 25, 2008

ohmygodohmygodohmygod we're all going to die and no one will get housing

GW may genuinely hate mac users or think they deserve to live in Mitchell as uperclassmen. According to the Hatchet (and a housing email) the new housing website

was designed to work specifically on a version of Internet Explorer only available to users of the Microsoft Windows computer operating system. Macs operate with Internet browsers such as Safari or Firefox, neither of which is compatible with the iHousing application.
Mac users are not to worry though as the housing program with its piercing insight has provided some helpful advice.

"The best advice that I can give is to have students not use Macs and come to (GW Housing Programs), a friend's computer or a computer lab, to make sure that the application goes through correctly," said Seth Weinshel, a director of housing.


This is insane.

It's 2008, I was not even aware people were still using internet explorer. According to this browser statistics information only 53% of internet users are using IE. Yes, GW has hired a company that alienates nearly half of all internet users. The article states that a patch may be introduced in March but that does not make this totally out of touch decision any less baffling.

I spent some time looking for solutions and all of them were far more work and required more knowledge than an average user would have. However, this link contains 7 ways to get IE6 on a mac (none of which are tremendously for a knowledgeable user) while this site contains older version of internet explorer.

I was able to access the site with the older copy of internet explorer that I downloaded from the latter link but as I do not use iHousing I cannot guarantee how well anything works (if it does at all).

These aren't excuses and GW's new system seems legitimately insane but I feel that working through some of these options may be better than running to Gelman at 7 am on a Friday to get the luxurious, cramped pseudo-hotel room in City Hall.

4 comments:

James said...

Mitchell Hall, here I come!

I'm not sure if I'm signed up for housing. I had to start over multiple times and the whole thing timed out while I was doing it on my work's T3 connection and in IE.

For next year, this really needs to be fixed.

James said...

Oh, and I just realized the irony that the process is called "iHousing" but doesn't work on a Mac, the company that made the i[Insert Phrase Here] thing cool and trendy.

They also lifted Apple's iPod ad campaign...damn.

Molly said...

I remember it was 5 minutes before the deadline and my friend told me you can't use a mac so I literally SPRINTED to the library to do this stupid form

David said...

Your right about the IE issue, and it appears to be even less used around GW. According to Google Analytics, only 15.86% of visitors to this website accessed it via IE. 17.24% used Safari and 66.90% used firefox.