Our developers at RMLS™ have been working hard this year on our browser and tablet compatibility project, and on December 12th we’ll introduce one of the more anticipated developments of this project: an improved Listing Load experience! We’ll also be removing the map coordinates requirement for listings in all areas, and making some housekeeping changes to the RMLS™ Terms of Service. Read on for details…

Improved Listing Load

After the switch, Listing Load will be compatible with more browsers and tablets. Subscribers using Listing Load on desktop machines may not notice many changes to the interface, but Listing Load will now work with Google Chrome and Apple Safari, in addition to Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Interface changes will be more noticeable for subscribers using a tablet to access RMLSweb. The tablet interface has been designed for more tablet-compatible interaction. Tablet users may notice the absence of the “List View” and “Detail View” tabs, as only a list view will be available (above). The interface works best in landscape mode, as there may be some width lost (resulting in clipping of information) in portrait mode. Given the constraints of tablets, this version of Listing Load will be unable to upload documents to a listing, and photos may only be uploaded one at a time.

Chrome is our recommended browser for Android users. Listing Load is experiencing performance issues on iPads using Safari in iOS7. RMLS™ will continue monitoring the issue and hopes the iOS7.1 release will mitigate the issue.

Map Coordinates No Longer Required

RMLSweb will no longer require map coordinates (page, column, and row) when submitting a listing! Earlier this year map coordinates ceased being a requirement in all but Portland metro, Lane County, and Curry County, but coordinates will now be unrequired for all RMLSweb listings. Rand McNally, the company responsible for Thomas Guide publications, no longer produces a Portland or Oregon edition—as brokers may not have easy access to the information anymore, RMLS™ has decided to make this change.

Terms of Service Change

RMLS™ has partnered with many third-party sites in 2013, including RPR, RatePlug, and New Home Source. As part of our regular password change on December 11th, users will need to accept a new Terms of Service, updated to clearly state that the RMLS™ Terms of Service apply only to RMLSweb and other RMLS™ websites and not to our third-party partners, such as those named above. View the redlined RMLS™ Terms of Service for brokers and for office staff (office managers, personal assistants, and input personnel).

Don’t forget, if you have any questions about these improvements to RMLSweb, contact the RMLS™ Help Desk at (503) 236-7657 or (877) 256-2169.

It has been a big year at RMLS™! Subscriber feedback drives our improvements to RMLSweb, and these latest improvements are no exception. Thanks, subscribers, for your input this year and into the future.

We know there are a lot of you out there who use Web browsers other than Internet Explorer… and as you are well aware… RMLSweb primarily supports Internet Explorer (IE).

However, we do want to clear the air about this situation, because things have changed a bit.

RMLSweb is now accessible utilizing most browsers. By accessible, I mean that you can log in and use the website, but we still highly recommend that you use Internet Explorer. We haven’t talked about it much because you should bear no expectation of being able to do all the same things that you can when using RMLSweb on Internet Explorer. But you can do many things and here is a list of what.

One omission you’ll notice is Listing Load. We aren’t allowing access to Listing Load in non-IE browsers because we know it has some limitations and we don’t want the listing content to suffer.

For Simplicity Sake: Scenarios When You Shouldn’t Use RMLSweb on Another Browser & When You Can
– If you want to get down to serious business (send reports, create a CMA, run statistics, enter a listing, prospecting/hotsheets), you should still use Internet Explorer.
– If you’re using a non-IE browser and just want to view a listing, do a search, or view a document – you should be okay.

But Why? Why is RMLSweb not compatible with all browsers?
Our focus has been and continues to be on updating RMLSweb in ways that will benefit all of our subscribers. But, while we’ve been doing that, we’ve also been working on browser compatibility – we’re just not doing it in one fell swoop.

RMLSweb was originally a system that we purchased. We then brought on our own development staff and through the years, they have been making RMLSweb our own system. However, there are still parts of it that are all written in the original code – which means those parts don’t work with other browsers.

However, each time we update something (like the recent mapping upgrades and new Forms & Documents search) we are writing it in code that should work with Firefox and other browsers. And, we still have some big updates to do, including CMA & statistics, which we tentatively plan to release in the next six months.

In other words, we could spend time rewriting the dated features of RMLSweb in code that will make it work with other browsers – but why spend time reinventing a dated product? Instead, the approach is to improve our existing product, and as we’re doing that, we are taking steps toward compatibility with each improvement.

You Can Help!
While we continue to work toward compatibility, there is limited functionality on non-IE browsers and we have not officially tested anything on them. So if you use a different browser and notice any issues – please e-mail those issues to helpdesk@rmls.com.