Slightly ajar

Banking websites have always been a big issue for alternative web browsers. They are notably difficult for a number of reasons, not least because banks are often slow moving conservative institutions (many still only officially support Internet Explorer and Netscape), and it is not possible to test the sites for issues because an account is needed at the bank in question. Banks are understandably hesitant about giving out test accounts that browser vendors can use in the QA process. Therefor a new approach is needed.

The ideal way would be to work with the Banks themselves to iron out any issues, but this isn't always possible. If a Bank is willing then we'd love to hear from them. We can't possibly open an account in every bank in the world, so I'd like to ask the help of any Opera users out there that use internet banking. If you're willing to spend a little time reporting issues you find on your bank's web site in Opera, then we'd be very grateful. Just leave a comment here, with which bank you are a member of, and a way to contact you (such as via pm on my.opera). If a bank is already represented then it doesn't matter; the more people we have testing the better and more reliable the results will be.

There will be a number of issues that you may encounter. The most obvious is when Opera is blocked entirely. In this case we can use user agent spoofing to spoof the domain that blocks us, to allow Opera access. You can test this by editing the site specific preferences for the domain that has the block, to use one of the user agents listed in the Network tab. If this works then you can send me the exact domain that needs spoofed (such as foo.bankofatlantis.com) and the value we need to spoof as. If it is a rendering issue then it will be useful to describe the issue and a saved copy of the page that reproduces the issue. If you know how to reduce the issue to just show the problem, then this would be very helpful. One very important thing to note is to never send anything with your account details, or personal information. In a screen shot blank these out using a photo editing package, or if you are sending html then use our source view to remove the information and replace it with random characters, then click the save button. Opera employees would never ask you for your log-in details, so never under any circumstances send anyone this information, no matter who it is.

With any issue that gets reported we will work to fix if it is an Opera bug, and if it is a web site bug, we'll try to contact the bank to get it fixed. We may contact you from time to time to confirm if a previously reported issue still exists.