I've been seeing ads for the new NRA on-line national firearms museum, and I've also been working on building a period rifle. I therefore thought it would be great to go and see if I could find some original examples of said period rifle at this new-fangled on-line museum, rather than having to, say, drive to Wyoming and visit the Cody Museum or pay 5 to 10 thousand dollars for an original rifle. I tried it from home using my Mac G4 to no avail. OK, I can forgive that. The old G4 still has an old version of OS-X and Safari, and I sometimes have problems using other web sites. Here at work I use XP Pro, IE 8, and a 700+ KBps ADSL connection. I patiently try nationalfirearmsmuseum.org a few times from work and I'm redirected to nramuseum.org which displays a black screen, this tiny little sentence in the middle, and a heap big helping of nothing else;
The full NRA experience requires a broadband connection. Click here to go directly to the standard NRA.org website.
From the standard NRA.org website you can eventually find a link to the museum, which then gives you said black screen. Repeat as needed to become convinced beyond reasonable doubt that you're not going to see any museum, no matter what, in spite of the fact that said non-viewable museum is currently being advertized all over the NRA publications. Denied. I then tried "compatibility view" in IE 8, which made quite a difference-- it put that sentence at the bottom of the black screen instead of the middle. Double denied.
If my setup can't work, who's does? I thought DSL was about as broad as broadband gets, while the only clue to the denial is a note telling me my connection speed is too low, with no indication of what they consider to be "broadband". Have I missed some new and wonderful breakthrough in IT that everyone else knows about and uses already? Do I need a cable ISP? Do I need to get Win 7 or what? In any case I think that if your web site doesn't work with the vast majority of existing computer setups, you're doing something wrong. That is, if you want the majority of people to see it, and you're not just interested in being cutting-edge for the sake of it, being satisfied with catering to an exclusive audience.
Then again, maybe I'm doing something wrong that makes it impossible to see this web site, though all the others I visit seem to work OK.
Dear NRA; I'd write you directly about this, but a black screen with nothing on it includes, as an accompanying feature, the non existence of a "if you can't view this page, please notify our web designer by clicking here" or anything like that.
Update Jan. 10; Without my having contected them directly, NRA Tech Support wrote me this morning and fixed my problem. Wow. That's service. More in comments.