CBA admits to NetBank Firefox bug

A recent upgrade to the Commonwealth Bank's NetBank service claims to "make your online banking a whole lot easier", but a problem has emerged for Firefox users.

The upgrade, which adds on-screen shortcuts for common tasks, and a revised tabbed interface and thus uses more horizontal screen real estate, has problems in launching a correctly-sized application window when running under Firefox.

NetBank launches in a fixed-width window which can't be resized, but the latest version doesn't fit within that window under Firefox, forcing users to scroll right to access basic functions such as logging out.

"The issue you have raised is a known issue which the NetBank Program Team is working to resolve as a priority," said an e-mail from the NetBank support team regarding the problem.

The Commonwealth recommends that Windows users use Internet Explorer and that Mac owners use Netscape Communicator for online banking for "best results", but Firefox is also listed as a supported platform, though the Commonwealth will not offer technical support for it.

Notably, Windows Vista is not among the officially supported platforms for NetBank either, according to the bank's help documentation.

The bank recommends that individual users run an on-site browser test to determine if their own browser is suitable, but this can be problematic.

Running the test on Firefox 2.0.0.6, this writer was informed that the "browser does not seem to support JavaScript", although in fact JavaScript was enabled.

Ensuring that browser-based applications work on a variety of browsers is a perennial problem for developers, and one that's only likely to get worse as browsers for mobile phones become more prevalent.

The most generous estimates suggest that Firefox may have up 25 percent of the desktop browser market, while other tracking systems peg the figure at around 15 percent.