Broken: Banana Republic

I try to avoid copying other bloggers, and especially guys like Jeffrey Veen, but this is just so exasperating I had to mention it.

I enjoy shopping at Banana Republic. I don't do it often because they're so expensive, but I try to check out the deals when I have time and drool (they don't like it when you do this) on the full-priced items. That whole line of stores - Old Navy, Gap, and Banana Republic - are my faves. You can pretty much count on finding some good clothes at those places, and that's not common.

Banana Republic though just lost my business. Just try visiting their site with Safari. Oh no, I'm sorry, you're not welcome. If you want to come in, you're going to have to let us dictate your browsing preferences. Want to complain? Nuh-uh. Get out now. You're not important to us, so please just leave.

Why do they do this? Well maybe it's because Safari doesn't have enough market share. Oh wait, that's not true! They support Netscape 7 - a dead and forgotten browser that has been relegated to a sad and sorry existence in a corner of AOL's corporate office somewhere. Okay, maybe it's because Safari doesn't support web standards and AJAX. Oh wait, that's a bunch of malarkey too! They made it work with IE 5.5+ and that's a pit of despair when it comes to web standards, and Safari works just fine with AJAX and leads the industry on some features of CSS.

Well, anyway, Jeff Veen says it much better than I do.