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FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

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41–50 of 199 posts

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#41
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All necessary parts are there, which is why e.g. jitsi meet or Google meet work without problem. It's more like they don't care than anything else.

Slack uses Amazon Chime as backend Chime is using h264 firefox still can not encode h264 videos in real time.

Yes, so it's precisely another case of "we tested on chrome and it works", which falls under "don't care" software development best practices.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be fixed.

Sorry, your comment is ambiguous; "should be" as in "needs to be fixed" or as in "has been fixed"?

The issue is open so it can only mean that it needs to be fixed.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#43
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do but who doesn't? Apple isn't different than any other tech companies. That said, yes, the global south produces for west in slave like conditions and it's sad.

It's a sad reality of society, but it doesn't have to be. I guess one of my biggest issues with modern day slavery is that the companies that exploit these poorer nations often paint a deceptive picture that everything is above board. And whats worse is that these companies have the audacity to get behind social movements. Its predatory and just another scheme to improve their bottom line and lull their customers int…

Only a world-wide revolution abolishing profit and money can put an end to this. 150 years later, the Commune lives on! :)

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#44
post #24

From what I've heard so far about FaceTime on non-apple devices, I'm extremely unimpressed.

And that's why we use Jitsi, Conversations, Jami... that is pieces of software that were designed to interoperate, not just work in a very specific set of circumstances on particular hardware, with a certain OS version and when the weather is right.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#45
post #21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I've read about Duo it seems to be AV1: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-duo-lyra-codec-better-... ...though I'm not sure whether they use it consistently.

How does this happen? AV1 encoding codec was still work in progress, and most chips don't support any hardware acceleration for this. Can we get reasonable frame rates on core CPU for av1 encoding already?

Duo uses AV1 for very low bandwidth calls. And then a mix of H.264 / VP8 / VP9 etc.. depending on many parameters. Disclaimer: worked on the product. https://blog.google/products/duo/4-new-google-duo-features-h...

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#46
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a guess, codecs seem the most likely explanation. Firefox has a h.264 decoder, but not an encoder I think.

Why can't firefox invoke the system dll or libraries for H.264 encode/decode? Like many video players do. Why must every browser ship its own codec or even Unicode collection is beyond me.

It's possible and it's compile time option, source package managers like portage allow you to do that.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#47
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are any (as opposed to "just" the added customer support burden), I wonder if they're the same issues that prevent Slack from allowing calls in Firefox...

As a corollary, I wonder if Slack will now implement calling functionality once Mozilla adds the necessary APIs for Apple to do its job here, which is probably very likely since I don't think Apple chose to ignore a non-Google browser on purpose.

Apple Business Manager recently stopped working in Firefox and that is a basic portal.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack uses Amazon Chime as backend Chime is using h264 firefox still can not encode h264 videos in real time.

Yes, so it's precisely another case of "we tested on chrome and it works", which falls under "don't care" software development best practices.

No, it's very practical. A lot of devices are just too weak to encode anything other than H.264 so that's the one codec you must support.

Other codecs are better, but you have to do more testing and enable those codecs only on calls where all members are using a device that supports it.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#49
It may seem an advantage to use the latest cutting edge features of a single platform, instead of using well established standards which are compatible with every browser. Sure, you are going to leave out some small minority of users, but you gain access to many new features.

However, you are helping push the web become an increasingly centralized place, controlled by just a few entities, with interests which are very different from yours.

You may think that there is no harm in doing so. Most people use Chrome anyway. And what difference can one more web app make?

However, it is exactly this laziness by skilled developers, who are the only that understand the problem, which brought us to the current situation. There is no way to fix this problem, if the people that understand it do not take a stand.

Next time that your manager asks you if you can have that sweet feature, instead of saying "sure, we just need to drop support for Firefox", please consider trying to explain what are the consequences in the long term.

I know this isn't easy for many people, which do not feel comfortable questioning orders or plans. However, this is our responsibility. Nobody else is going to care, if we do not care.

Re: FaceTime on the web requires Chrome or Edge, no mention of Firefox

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack uses Amazon Chime as backend Chime is using h264 firefox still can not encode h264 videos in real time.

Yes, so it's precisely another case of "we tested on chrome and it works", which falls under "don't care" software development best practices.

Unfortunately, hardware VP9 decoding isn't really well-supported except in high-end phones (in context of multiple decoding, single decoding works fine) due to bugs in Mediatek's implementation. There's software decoding, but that's still taxing to a phone, and transcoding to H.264 server-side but that doesn't bode well to end-to-end encryption.
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