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United States Your Rights Online

Write Your Congressman -- If You Use IE 115

Posted by timothy from the beholden-beholden dept.
inonit writes "Well, geez -- after all this US election talk, I got inspired to write my congresswoman. But as a good Slashdotter, imagine my irritation when I found the following note in the "Contact" section: 'In order to send an e-mail to Congresswoman Tubbs-Jones, please complete this form using the Internet Explorer browser. If the Internet Explorer browser is not available, please mail your correspondence to the listed postal mailing address above.' I don't really have the time to check all 435 Congressional sites to see if this is widespread, but it gives me some insight into why all those <sarcasm>foreigners</sarcasm> are complaining about having their governments be beholden to U.S. technology companies. Can someone running IE write my congressperson and ask her to let me write her? Does she only accept phone calls from AT&T customers?" I just tried filling out the form with Mozilla, and ended up at a page notifying me of a search error. (Huh?)
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Write Your Congressman -- If You Use IE More

Write Your Congressman -- If You Use IE

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  • ...that Micro$oft has our Government in its pockets...

    • By the way, I just sent the following message to the Honorable Tubbs:

      On behalf of the Slashdot community (http://www.slashdot.org), I think it's despicable that you require your constituents to use Microsoft Internet Explorer to contact you via the web. There are several other browsers available, all of which are better than IE.
      I just have one question for you -- how much was the last check Bill Gates sent you?

      One interesting tidbit is that it's required that you indicate whether or not you are a registered voter. Guess that makes it easy to sort the wheat from the chaff....

      • Okay, so I hit the submit button and got the following:


        THIS SEARCH THIS DOCUMENT GO TO
        Next Hit Forward New Bills Search [loc.gov]
        Prev Hit Back HomePage [loc.gov]
        Hit List Best Sections Help [loc.gov]
        Doc Contents         No records found with
        Please enter another Search Phrase.

        Apparently IE don't work so well as Ms. Tubbs would like...

      • Please don't speak "on behalf of the Slashdot community" with that kind of vitriol. It's bad enough when people on the site are obnoxious to each other, it's certainly not any better on the 99.9999% of the world that isn't Slashdot, and it's *definitely* not the tone of voice that should be used when sending a letter to a member of congress. "You'll get more flies with honey..."
    • Geesh, I made a similar joke in another thread and got modded as a troll. Oh, the whim of the moderators. sigh.

  • From the page source (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jholder ( 22001 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:02PM (#4619030) Homepage Journal
    Which you CAN read with Mozilla" <INPUT type=hidden name=mailto value=tannaz.haddadi@mail.house.gov>

    • Re:From the page source (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dredd13 ( 14750 )
      I wonder if that's a standard formmail.pl complete with the exploitability for spamming?

      • Re:From the page source (Score:3, Informative)

        by frankie ( 91710 )
        Actually it's just a broken form entirely. The other relevant line is: form method="post" action= "http://www.house.gov/htbin/formproc/tubbsjones/ht _contact1.txt &display=/tubbsjones/contact_thanks.htm" But house.gov returns a 404 error at that address.
    • I tried sending an e-mail to my Senator and I got an auto-reply saying I needed to use his webform. I sent an e-mail to another Senator and did not get the auto-reply. I guess it's hit and miss.

  • a new form of slashdoting (Score:5, Funny)

    by ealar dlanvuli ( 523604 ) <froggie6@mchsi.com> on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:02PM (#4619043) Homepage
    a million teenagers calling her offices at 3pm...

    I feel for the receptionist
    • And what makes you think it's just teenagers?

      I hope some 20/30/40-somethings who read slashdot (ESPECIALLY all you Ohio citizens!!) DO pick up the phone and call. While I doubt the IE-Only problem
      is deliberate, there are plenty of form mail scripts that work in .

      It is genuinely possible that the representitive in question doesn't know about this problem (do you REALLY think they read all the mail themselves?), so the best way to bring it to her attention (or at least her staff's) is to deluge them with POLITE requests that they fix the form so it works in all browsers.

      Think about it.

      • I shall put sarcasm dislcaimer on all future jokes. My apologies.
      • Since the office is likely to be staffed by the clueless, you might just pull the domain contact by typing

        whois -hwhois.nic.gov house.gov

        and getting back the house whois record

        % DOTGOV WHOIS Server ready
        U.S. House of Representatives (HOUSE-DOM)
        Ford House Office Building Washington, DC 20515
        Domain Name: HOUSE.GOV
        Status: Active
        Domain servers in listed order:
        MERCURY.HOUSE.GOV 143.231.1.67
        TUNGSTEN.HOUSE.GOV 137.18.255.242
        Technical POC:
        Manson, John L. (JLM)
        (202) 226-4244 (FAX)(202) 226-0123
        JOHN.MANSON@MAIL.HOUSE.GOV

        Administrative POC:Adams, Joseph L. (JLA1)
        (202) 692-1337
        JOE.ADAMS@MAIL.HOUSE.GOV

        Beyond that, the mail seems to be routing funny over at house.gov. Can anybody make heads or tails of their DNS record?

  • and here's the kicker... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Derek ( 1525 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:11PM (#4619132) Journal
    ...quoted from the top of her "contact" page

    **NOTICE: Due to recent anthrax cases, mail delivery to the Washington office has stopped indefinitely. Please utilize e-mail, fax, and phone when possible to ensure timely receipt and response.

    So, I guess snailmail isn't even an option!!

    -Derek

  • mal-formed html (Score:5, Informative)

    by HyperbolicParabaloid ( 220184 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:12PM (#4619147) Journal
    Submitting the form in Mozilla fails because there is a Search form earlier in the page, but that form is never closed. The submit button at the bottom of the email form is in a different form, but since the first one was never closed, the browser submits the FIRST form.
    If the form were closed properly, I bet this would work fine in ANY browser.

  • at least you can get her address (Score:4, Informative)

    by qengho ( 54305 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:14PM (#4619164)

    My rep (Wolf/Virginia) says this on his contact page:

    I participate in the "Write Your Representative" program of the House of Representatives so that I can more effectively respond to the needs and concerns of the people of the 10th District. A public e-mail address does not provide a way to ensure that 10th District residents get priority in reaching me over the Internet. Please click on the icon below to e-mail me through the "Write Your Representative" program.

    Whatever. He has a link to a generic form [house.gov] that seems browser-agnostic and uses a numeric code instead of an email address in the hidden fields.

    • ... A public e-mail address does not provide a way to ensure that 10th District residents get priority in reaching me over the Internet.

      If you want the writerep page for a rep who isn't yours, all you need is the state and the zip+4 of some address in his district. (Or just a zip, assuming USPS's zip+4 lookup works. It tells me I don't exist.) Conveniently, every rep has an office in their district, and makes its address easy to find.

      At least someone on Wolf's staff knows the difference between email and webforms. Everytime I see a rep's "email me" link lead to writerep, I want to flood them with messages saying "WEBFORMS ARE NOT EMAIL!"

  • My message was thus: "It is pathetic that you require Internet Explorer to submit e-mail messages. Aren't you aware the Microsoft is a convicted monopolist? The Internet runs on open protocols. Your eMail should be the same." I clicked submit, and even with IE I got an error message: "No records found with Please enter another Search Phrase." Looks like a paper cert is employed in the halls of congress...

    • Re:Well, I wrote her with IE... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Penguin ( 4919 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @04:25PM (#4619811) Homepage

      My message was thus: "It is pathetic that you require Internet Explorer to submit e-mail messages. Aren't you aware the Microsoft is a convicted monopolist? The Internet runs on open protocols. Your eMail should be the same."

      What did (s)he reply? -1, Flamebait?

      (for thousands of years smileys haven't been necessary for the written media - if we just in a couple of years have lost our ability to understand irony, we have a proof of the Net making people stupid)

  • They can't even go by their own laws... (Score:4, Informative)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:17PM (#4619206) Homepage
    Section 508:

    (n) When electronic forms are designed to be completed on-line, the form shall allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.


    Who wants to bet this page won't pass this requirement? I'm wondering if the user's assistive technology warns them to use IE. :)

    It's been a law for a few years now, for government pages.

    • Of course not... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ThinkingGuy ( 551764 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:46PM (#4619455) Homepage
      Many federal laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act, the OSHA laws, to name a few, explicitly exempt the US congress and their staff.
      Congress doesn't have to follow that law... because Congress passed a law that says so :)

      • When I was designing some sites for the Air Force a while back, I had to make sure they passed all the tests for availability to those with disabilities. Sucks if Congress doesn't have to do that, this being a democracy and all. Guess people with disabilities just don't need access to our government.

        • Most laws don't apply to the US Government, for instance various environmental laws do not apply (thus why the uS Government is the largest polluter in the US, by several orders of magnitude).

  • Try Opera (Score:4, Interesting)

    by reddog1 ( 470465 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:25PM (#4619286)
    Opera IMO works better then mozilla and has an option to identify itself as MSIE. Normally when I find a site that requires IE I flip opera to identify as IE and it all works :-) Awesome Browser [opera.com]
    • The other option is to use XUL Planet's Preference Toolbar which gives you the option to change the User Agent string on the fly, like Opera. I personally haven't had to change it from "Real UA" to any other setting so far other than testing purposes. It also allows me to enable/disable JavaScript and Popups on the fly, along with other neat features.

      More info about the toolbar can be found here [xulplanet.com].

      • Parent should get mad mod points because this little pref bar thingie r0xXx0rz!!!! I just downloaded it and now I'm hoping I can use IE even less than the 2% I have to nowadaws. Thanks User #58365!!!
        • I'm glad that you really like the toolbar. It's great since I can clear the cache, history and location bar in seconds when testing stuff or the auto-complete gets too hairy :)
    • The problem with this approach is that to the web site you look like IE, not Opera, which then allows them to claim "Over 98% (or whatever number they pull out of their logs) use MSIE, thus we're justified in only supporting it." And they're so clueless they don't realize their log stats are meaningless.

      If all browsers report that they're MSIE, and they all include kludges to render crappy HTML coded specificly for MSIE, then all browsers effectively become MSIE, and Bill wins.

      • If all browsers report that they're MSIE, and they all include kludges to render crappy HTML coded specificly for MSIE, then all browsers effectively become MSIE, and Bill wins.

        Hardly. Internet Explorer reports that it's Mozilla*, but do you think that makes anybody feel any better?

        *Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.2; Mac_PowerPC)
      • Opera does put the word "Opera" in the userAgent string, but it's at the end so that the standard browser sniffers generally identify it as IE.

        Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows XP) Opera 6.0 [en]

        But you're right, most sites are currently misidentifying Opera and calling it IE. That will happen until they update their code to deal with this new quirk.
      • If all browsers report that they're MSIE, and they all include kludges to render crappy HTML coded specificly for MSIE, then all browsers effectively become MSIE, and Bill wins.

        So if we use Opera, then the terrorists have already won.
    • If you are disabled or have a preference for the keyboard, you should know that Opera doesn't support tabindex or accesskey [opera.com]. That isn't mentioned in their accessibility pages [opera.com] though. These features have been defined since HTML 4.0 BTW.
    • In this case, the problem was a bad FORM element in the HTML. Because Opera is not as slop-tolerant (which I consider a Very Good Thing(TM)) as IE, I don't think it would have saved the occassion.

  • Easy choice (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmmm. I guess now you know who not to vote for in the next election...

  • Phoenix (Score:3, Informative)

    by RedWolves2 ( 84305 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:43PM (#4619424) Homepage Journal
    Use Phoenix then you can set you useragent type to IE.
  • Perhaps the web page in question is intentionally broken in order to avoid overloading the staff.

    • Not a bad idea, especially if one is canvassing for _informed_ opinions on technology issues.

      The only people she'll hear from are those who know technology well enough, and are intelligent enough to figure out the way around the presented barrier.

  • house.gov/writerep/ works fine (Score:3, Informative)

    by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot AT stefanco DOT com> on Thursday November 07, 2002 @03:47PM (#4619456) Homepage Journal
    When I try to write my Representative, I am directed to http://www.house.gov/writerep/ [house.gov]
    which works fine with Mozilla.

    No funny IE tags, no funny forms, just a classic, simple webform.

  • Generic House Email Form (Score:3, Informative)

    by n-baxley ( 103975 ) <nate@baxle y s . org> on Thursday November 07, 2002 @04:00PM (#4619560) Homepage Journal
    There is a generic email form [house.gov] for all house members. It doesn't say anything about needing a certain browser and I'm pretty sure that I've emailed my congress critter through this form several times.

  • In the pockets of US tech companies? Surely not! (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @04:01PM (#4619567) Journal
    Why, *every* self-respecting contituient downloads WINE, installs it, downloads IE, installs that in WINE (doing whatever hacking is necessary to get it to work), and then uses that to contact their representative. They aren't forcing you to buy the products of the (by far) largest donor of government funds from the tech industry at all! They certainly aren't trying to quell the voices of the people that oppose it.
  • I am writing this while on hold with I was answered politely but the receptionist who politely put me on hold for the person who could answer the question of why i needed Internet Explorer to email Ms Tubbs-Jones. Ms Sheila Harvey answered and then asked for my personal information and they "appreciated me bringing this to their attention" They are going to look into this and call me back I will post the results of this call as soon as they call me back as a reply to this message. It was suggested I fax them or send them postal mail ... where i pointed this out on teh page ... "**NOTICE: Due to recent anthrax cases, mail delivery to the Washington office has stopped indefinitely. Please utilize e-mail, fax, and phone when possible to ensure timely receipt and response." Interestingly ( or not so much so) her page was created by frontpage 5 and the charset is of course windows-1252. There is no doctype or anything else to make this page apply to any normal standard. - more when i get called back.
  • ... I sent an email to the webmaster (really content manager, as she had to consult the "techs") of my rep's (Robert Wexler, whom I have greatly tormented over his support of the P2P hacking bill and other idiotic anti-consumer, anti-tech legislation) site about a bug that made it only viewable in IE. She was very accomodating and informed me that a fix was in process.
  • you need to move.

    BC

  • Her page is broken (Score:3, Informative)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @04:47PM (#4620034) Homepage Journal
    What the subject says. You can't find search terms if you try to write her.

    Go to the house.gov link above the statement and contact her that way.

  • Her site is busted (Score:3, Informative)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Thursday November 07, 2002 @05:01PM (#4620263) Homepage Journal
    I just tried to send her this but couldn't. Yay, using Slash as a stand in for participatory democracy:
    As a technology professional and, based on someone who I think would agree with most of your political stances (that is, I'm want to be nice about this), please have your website amended by a qualified professional. The form used to send this message has a couple of problems that really ought to be addressed:
    • There is no good reason for a web form such as this to force visitors to use a particular kind of browser software to access it. In spite of the recent court decision t hat would suggest otherwise, Microsoft has been tried & convicted as an abusive monopolist, and if visitors take the initiative to use alternative software they should be applauded, not excluded. Keeping out users based on their commercial choices seems very anti-democratic to me.

    Thank you for your attention, and for God's sake keep voting against Bush's war against Iraq. I'm sure history will prove that you were right to oppose this. Your speech against it, at http://www.house.gov/tubbsjones/pr021009.htm, was wonderful. Thank you.

    Hey, it got written up, it might as well get posted somewhere. Maybe her staff will decide to start reading Slashdot today...

    • It is good stuff, you send it to the email address it should go to: tannaz.haddadi@mail.house.gov [mailto]
      Probably an aid or something.
    • She had one of those speeches that provided absolutely nothing to the debte. Sadam is bad/evil..blah blah blah, but her main points: How much will the war cost, How long will it take, exactly how many on our side will perish and Have we finished the war on terrorism.

      No set of answers to any of these questions would change her mind, so why ask them?

      Cost should be a basis on whether or not we get into a war? Now that is immoral.
      If a war was known to take only 1 day, as opposed to 1 year, then it's some how better? What if in that 1 day 10x the number of people died hastily as oppose to 1/10th that number over a year?

      How many will die? There's never a way to figure this out. We estimated what now seem to be pretty big loses on the original, yet never came close to that amount. We did the same thing on peace keeping missions. While life is extremly valuable, this metric and this resolution is useless.

      Have we finished the war on terrorism? I guess she doesn't beleive this has any impact on that war.

      anyhow, i wish her form was working now, i wouldn't mind sending her mail i'm sure she wouldn't mind deleting.

      -malakai

  • One stop representative shop (Score:4, Informative)

    by bignendian ( 465640 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @05:03PM (#4620278)
    Http://www.congress.org allows you to use one form to send email to all of your senators and representatives and the president. They seem to have worked their way into the webforms too.
  • As to effectivness here's a short list of what might work and what probably won't, effective to useless(IMO):

    personally handing over cash and/or showing them pictures of them in bed with three midgets, two underage kids, a great dane and a defrocked nun. Both is best. You'll get what you want.

    normal hard money campaign contribution

    soft money campaign contribution

    well written short to the point snail mail letter, 1 page tops

    fax

    telephone call

    do nothing, watch sports, wrestling or sitcoms on tv

    spend all your time downloading mp3's and mooovees

    take part in protests carrying signs and whatnot

    e-mail

    • You are correct; sending email is about as effective as picking lint out of your navel.

      As for the statement that they don't read mail thanks to the Anthrax thing, that is false. I sent a snail-mail letter to my SenateSucker about a month ago, and received a reply via same last week.

  • NOT a Microsoft conspiracy... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jsimon12 ( 207119 ) on Thursday November 07, 2002 @09:40PM (#4622419) Homepage
    As much as I would really truly love to say she is a tool for Bill Gates it honestly looks like she is NOT. According to Open Secrets she didn't get any money from Microsoft [opensecrets.org]. Just to be sure I went ahead and went through all the pages of the Microsoft donations [opensecrets.org] and I could not find her listed anywhere. Looks like the bulk of her money comes from labor unions. Also if you look at the source it was created with Frontpage 5.0.

    So my guess is the whole "Use Microsoft Internet Explorer" bit is more of a lack of knowledge in creating web forms, so they used a tool that generated stuff for Internet Explorer only. My advice, pen a nice letter to her explaining and possibly offering to help, if will go a lot farther then hate and spit, especially since it looks like NONE of her money comes from Microsoft, hence this is NOT a conspiracy, I repeat NOT a conspiracy, simply a honest mistake made by someone who probably doesn't know better.

  • grrr.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by darkpurpleblob ( 180550 )

    In order to send an e-mail to Congresswoman Tubbs-Jones, please complete this form using the Internet Explorer browser.

    Why does it say 'in order to send e-mail'? If I cannot see the email address that I am sending my message to, and I am not using the program/site that I use to send and recieve email then I am clearly not sending email. Sure, it may be sent as an email message eventually from the server that receives the form submission, but this is totally hidden to me as a user.

    It really should say 'In order to send a message to Congresswoman...'

    • Because most people, probably she included, don't know the difference, and probably wouldn't care. Aggrivating for us, but not too important otherwise.
    • I think you're taking a very strict interpretation of the term "e-mail". It's an abbreviation for "electronic mail", and whether you send it using some internet email client to some.address@some.host or via filling in and submitting a form, it's still email.
  • I sent e-mails Tom Daschle and Tim Hutchinson using Galeon and it worked fine. I think that each Senator is responcible for his own website, so maybe whoever designed that particular site didn't know what they were doing.
  • Following the fine example set by others here, I figured I'd go to my Congressman's official website and "send an e-mail." Being lazy, I simply took the link to Rep. Tubbs Jones [house.gov] (http://www.house.gov/tubbsjones/) and changed the name to holt [house.gov].

    Of course, I expected that to work. (And, of course, I was wrong.) Rep. Rush Holt's (NJ) [house.gov] official website is at http://holt.house.gov. Doesn't seem to be any consistency in anything on the House pages!
  • In a recent 'Ask Slashdot' the president of a university student society complained that the university had blocked access to Kazaa and was complaining it was censorship, and asked what the slashdot community thought of this. To my surprise, there was a chorus of people saying "Stop whining... these are university resources, file sharing is pointless, takes huge bandwidth, etc...". I think the same thing applies here. When you have 90~95% of people using IE, why should your congress(wo)man have her staff spend their time testing the site with every freeware/OSS/weirdo browser. Personally I love Mozilla/Phoenix, but that doesn't mean that the government should necessarily support any whim I may have. There's no reason she should even take comments through an online form. There are many other channels, that worked perfectly well for hundreds of years before the internet to contact your elected officials. So really, be thankful there is any online form at all, and, if you really don't like it, write a letter :)
    • When you have 90~95% of people using IE, why should your congress(wo)man have her staff spend their time testing the site with every freeware/OSS/weirdo browser.

      If there aren't many people using these "wierd" browsers, then there isn't much to worry about now is there? I think contrary to your belief, the world uses more than IE. I seriously doubt that 90% of the world uses IE, as evidenced by the use of Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, and other browsers.

      Aside from that, they all share one thing: standards. Don't follow them, and well... you don't have any credibility in this world as a tech worker. I don't care if you call them MS extensions or not, if you are offering a public service as a government worker you need to use standards so that the entire country can use it, not just your IE constituents.

      There's no reason she should even take comments through an online form. There are many other channels, that worked perfectly well for hundreds of years before the internet to contact your elected officials. So really, be thankful there is any online form at all, and, if you really don't like it, write a letter :)

      Oh please, stop with the elitist mentality.
      Any measure of communication is sufficient, and it is the job of our government personnel to use the channels of communication to stay open to the constituents.
      The only reason regular postal mail is more prevalant currently is because mail has been around longer than the Internet. I'm sure 30-40 years this thought pattern will be extinct... thank god.
  • Really, she is your congresswoman, so any comments should come from you. There is probably just some IE geek out there who designed a nifty little form retrieval for her that only runs in IE, without thinking about the implications and those who would not be able to use it. Similar to those who write pages in FrontPage then don't think to test if other browsers can view the page.
  • as someone who has worked in the office of a US Senator, I can assure you that the program the press people are trained on and use to make office websites IS Frontpage-- which probably helps account for why Mozilla doesnt work so well with them.

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