One of the drawbacks to using RISC OS in recent years has become the use of internet services such as Online Banking. Many of these services require the use of certain browsers on the Windows™ platform most likely Internet Explorer®.

However, all is not lost and there are many of these services that are quite accessible from RISC OS. In this article, my intention is to start a round up of the Online Banking services that are and are not accessible from our favoured platform.

Essentially, I cannot hope to have tested every online banking service, with each of the main browsers - that's where you the readers come in. I intend to start the ball rolling and for the resource of known services to build up over time.

This in turn will allow revisions of the main article.


So without further discussion let's get on and start the review:

The browsers that I have tested with are Oregano (1.10) from Castle and WebsterXL from R-Comp - two versions - 1.98n (last public release) and 1.98w - current beta testers version.

I have used various options for the 'Faking' of the browser type. In Oregano located under icon bar menu -> Choices -> Misc -> Who am I? And for WebsterXL located in Icon bar menu -> Configure -> Browser -> Script -> Identity

Javascript is 'on' unless stated otherwise.

Halifax Online - (www.halifax-online.co.uk)

This service works quite well with the current 2 main browsers under RISC OS - Oregano and WebsterXL.

With the former, there are no real problems, you can log in see your balances (or portfolio of accounts) and undertake the transactions you require. Faking set to Netscape® 4.72

With WebsterXL, there a few problems, but it is still possible to undertake the transactions etc. The main problems seem to be due to the WebFetch fetcher (1.36) it gives an error (just click continue) when trying to load the initial page. Then it does not seem to do an automatic refresh (when using the account portfolio page as the point of entry after logging in).

However this is not a problem as the Halifax provide a link in case the redirection fails. These problems have been fixed in the later versions that are due for release soon.


Royal Bank of Scotland - (www.rbsdigital.com) - (Business account).

This site uses dynamic html quite a bit so the page layout is messed up, however that does not necessarily stop us using the service - it just looks less 'pretty' than intended.

With Oregano, 'Faking' as Netscape does not work - the browser is detected and we get an 'Upgrade your browser' message. However when 'Faking' as Internet Explorer 4, we can get in - they're browser 'sniffing' technology is not that good! All is not well however, as the 'nice' webdesigner folks have used some nasty html/javascript combinations which mean that you can't click on any of the intended items eg. tr onclick="url" and no real a tags as you'd expect.

They do however have a small selection of 'popular services' on a drop down list at the top of the page, which allows, for example the payment of bills. All is not lost however, as so long as you are happy doing a few 'work-arounds' you can use the service - mostly you need to view the page source, work out where they were trying to send you eg. balances.asp becomes https://www.rbsdigital.com/secure/balances.asp so you can 'get by'.

Now for WebsterXL, the current public release version does not get very far without giving errors and getting stuck at the front page. That's when it's time to try direct to the secure pages https://www.rbsdigital.com/secure/ and once WebsterXL is set to be 'Faked' to Internet Explorer™, we get to the log in page - sort of! The page loads, most of the way through (if you keep pressing the left 'Alt' key which forces Javascript to move on when it's stuck) however the page just keeps reloading.

Now onto the beta version, going to the main page just gives a white page - nothing renders, so again onto the secure pages direct - it's not perfect, a couple of errors reported but at least you get to a login page. After a couple of reloads of this page, you can get through to the second stage, however something is problematic with the Javascript support at this stage because when you enter security details, the javascript reports that you've not filled any of the fields in! A little way to go with this before it's a viable option.

WebsterXL also does not support the tr onClick="url" methods, having said that it's mixing the standards that are set for page layout anyway - so over to the Royal Bank of Scotland on that one!


In Summary, both WebsterXL and Oregano can make good use of the Halifax-Online banking service, neither however, can currently make use of the Royal Bank of Scotland Digital Banking.

After that quick run through of two Online Banking services using two of the main RISC OS browsers, it's over to you. What are your experiences, what works with what, what doesn't?

Post your comments here [2].