The Nationwide Takes A Step Forward

Posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

It seems like a long time since I wrote about the importance of making websites work without JavaScript, a post that uncovered the Nationwide building society locking customers without JavaScript enabled out of their site with nothing but a blank page to look at. The post elicited a response from Ian Lloyd from the Nationwide web team, saying that they would look into the issue.

While it has been a long time before I noticed any difference, an online banking site can’t be changed up that quickly, in the last month or so I did notice a difference to the site. Jumping immediately to my “disable JavaScript” button I proceeded to try to sign on to the online banking section. I was met with a message:

Nationwide’s Internet Banking requires JavaScript and cookies to be enabled. It appears that your browser does not support JavaScript, or you have disabled it. Please re-enable JavaScript or try accessing this site using a different browser.

The Nationwide have taken the first step towards accessibility for those without JavaScript enabled, a <noscript> element prints out the above text. While I don’t claim any knowledge of the stringent security measures that banks must take, I am still quite sure that JavaScript should not be necessary to log on. To make sure of this, I checked with my other online bank, the HSBC. I was able to log on without JavaScript enabled.

Small Steps

While a <noscript> element really is the least anyone can do by notifying users that they can’t use the site without JavaScript, it is a start. As I said above, changing an online banking system is not a trivial matter, so I appreciate what the Nationwide have done so far. Let’s hope that this change can inspire further work at the Nationwide, and anywhere else where JavaScript is required.

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Comments

  1. 1April 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am

    Jonny Says:

    I find that banking sites are notoriously bad for user funtionality. I have noticed a slight change in the wind this year though and the HSBC site has had a redesign.

    All in all you would think all banks who offer various you bank account options with online banking would have a sound online presence for all users.


  2. 2April 23rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Phil Says:

    Jonny, you are right, but I think the issue with these banking sites is that they have been around in one form or another before all the best practices that we follow nowadays.

    I was pleased to see, when I checked logging in to the HSBC, that you could do it without JavaScript. I do remember a time when logging in to the HSBC caused the online banking part to open in a popup window, which is just as bad. With some of these redesigns or tweaks it seems that maybe the banks are coming round to a better way of thinking and that’s good for everyone.


  3. Pingback by Are you blanking your customers? | Corporate Eye
    April 25th, 2008 at 9:13 am

  4. 3April 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am

    Fraser Pearce Says:

    Its a bit buggy in opera too. The top navigation bar dissaprears sometimes making it a pain to navigate… and you have to click back a few times to get it back, and then that of course sometimes invalidates the session because of the reliance on JS and not using the back button. Sigh.

    I’ve actually thought about offering to come in and overhaul it for them.


  5. 4April 26th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Phil Says:

    Fraser,

    You’re right, I’ve found that for some reason the navigation bar disappears too. I’ve never invalidated my session, but I can see how that would happen too.

    You’re a brave person to even think about overhauling an online banking system! There must be so much legacy code in there that they rely on! It does need it though.


  6. 5April 26th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Fraser Pearce Says:

    I work for the BBC… I eat legacy code for breakfast. ;)


  7. 6April 29th, 2008 at 8:13 am

    Phil Says:

    It’s all yours then Fraser! All yours!


  8. 7May 2nd, 2008 at 12:31 am

    Mike Says:

    To be honest I’m surprised that Banks don’t hire leading web developers and security specialists for their online banking systems. The recent copied attempt to hack the BBC shows that even tech-savvy developers can be caught out when dealing with private data, so if a bank is making these sorts of mistakes there is a lot of potential for problems to come up.


  9. 8May 2nd, 2008 at 7:56 am

    Phil Says:

    Mike,

    I think you will find that a lot of the developers working for the Nationwide and other banks are very talented. As I pointed out, Ian Lloyd is on the front end team at the Nationwide and is a standards and accessibility enthusiast. I think part of the problem is that sites like that do get bogged down in the security aspect of things, thought rightly so, and forget some of the basic front end web development principles. It is nice, however, to see that they are changing that for the better now.


  10. 9July 4th, 2008 at 9:32 am

    colin Says:

    I’m not sure if this is the most appropriate place, so sorry for posting here.
    I’m having a similar javascript problem at with with Hotmail. Up to two days ago I could access my Hotmail account without any problems. But now, I get the following error whenever I try to click on an email to read it “Object doesn’t support this property or method.” Our IT have stated that as Hotmail isn’t a business critical system, they will not be making any changes to the network. But does anyone know of a work-around? (via a proxy or portal?)
    p.s. I work for the civil service, behind the gsi - hence IT’s prananoia!

    thanks,
    Col


  11. 10July 10th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

    Phil Says:

    Hi Colin,

    I worked in the civil service for a bit and couldn’t get near my email (Gmail) at all from behind the firewall, so I think you were probably lucky to get to your Hotmail at all!

    If you are getting JavaScript errors then it is not a problem you or your IT department can solve. More likely it is something you should try to feedback to Hotmail letting them know the browser you are using and what actions you took to get the error.

    This continues to prove that things can go wrong when JavaScript is relied upon, even if JavaScript is enabled for the user.


  12. 11July 18th, 2008 at 11:47 am

    colin Says:

    thanks phil.
    the igoogle gadget works reasonable well - i can read and send text only messages, but this does mean that i can’t read html emails nor view attachments - i’m got to see if it can forward them to my work email to try.

    thanks,
    col


  13. 12July 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    Phil Says:

    Hey Colin, glad that worked out for you!


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