how to access citicards.com under Linux
A few months back, it seemed that main page to sign on to http://www.citicards.com under linux was problematic. The page showed at first, with the desired login form shown on the top left corner as usual. Then, whole screen went blank. Using Firefox under Windows, a few splash went by then you were back at the main page. Searching by Google showed some tricks to toggle off then on ertain JAVASCRIPT options at certain point. I tried and it worked ok.
A month ago, while staring at the blank page, I right clicked on it, only to find a familar Macromedia flash player setting pop-up. I noticed that the ‘Play’ checkbox was not checked. I checked it.
Viola! A few splash later, I was back to the familiar logon page again. What a hassle! I am grateful that I don’t have to boot back to Windows nor have to jump hoops to toggle them JAVASCRIPT options.
Yesterday I upgraded the player plugin to the latest 9.0.124.0 release for Linux (rpm package) from 9.0.48. This fixed an unrelated problem I had with http://www.hulu.com. Before the upgrade, I couldn’t type in my username and password to sign on in order to watch R-rated movies. I had to type username and password elsewhere (Location field in the browser, or a separate terminal), then copy+paste them in. With the upgrade, I can type right in.
Today, when I tried to generate a virtual number for my citibank credit card, I was surprised that I couldn’t paste in the username or password I highlighted in my big secret file opened by VIM in a Gnome terminal. Before the upgrade, I used to be able to paste by simply clicking the mid-button on a three-button Logitech PS/2 mouse.
Right clicking in the login or password field on the virtual number generator pop-up window, both the COPY and PASTE menu elements were shaded out. I had to go back to the highlighted secret, and right clicked to select ‘copy’ first. Only then, the ‘PASTE’ came out of shade and allowed me to paste in my secret password and such.
Guess they must have a good reason to change the clipboard buffer the flash player uses. All this is on a stock Firefox/1.8.0.12 browser with Gecko/20080418 under stock CentOS 5.1/i386. I hope the day come soon when desktop users of a mainstream Linux distribution does not have to suffer from glitches like this.
When do you think that day will be? Five year, ten years, fifty years from now?
