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Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

teams.live.com

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Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#161

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

scarface74 wrote: post #94
nerdponx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks like someone made a boo-boo it’s simply based on the user agent, w/e string matching they do is too strict they aren’t checking for actual JS/WebASM compatibility or anything like that. Microsoft has repeatedly engaged in malicious anticompetitive behavior. Without any additional information, I therefore think it's rational to place a high prior probability on this being malicious anticompetitive behavior. Th…

[flagged]

Well, the guy is still stalking me and using all possible dark patterns and weasel language to make me do what he wants, and if I don't agree, he will do it anyway by abusing the fact that I need to stay secure.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#162

Post by danpalmer »

calibas wrote: post #151

I don't buy that this is accidental. When you write software, you test it on every platform you choose to support. If it doesn't work on a supported platform, then you take the time to fix it before release. It's not an "accident" when the software doesn't work on a platform you didn't bother to test on. That platform is being neglected by policy, not because of some "accident" in the code.

> When you write software, you test it on every platform you choose to support.

This depends on your definition of "support". It's very likely that Microsoft do not claim to support (as in, put customer support resources behind) Firefox Nightly, this would be reasonable as it's provided for development utility, not daily use.

However, I do somewhat disagree that you test it on every platform. If Teams is built as a website, do we expect them to test every feature of every release on every browser? Probably not, we expect that they do reasonable testing across a representative range of browsers, maybe focused on major features.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#163

Post by AshamedCaptain »

lousken wrote: post #32
yokoprime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is an error. Teams supports FF stable, they have even made efforts to improve support https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filter...

both nighly and stable ff is broken - my mother couldn't access her meeting in Firefox the other day because Teams said "you only have to use Edge or Chrome"

This is absolutely true. There are some types of meetings (likely the ones which are MS Stream-based -- but as a plain user this is impossible to detect) where upon joining you will get the dreaded message about incompatible browser.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#164

Post by kredd »

calibas wrote: post #151

I don't buy that this is accidental. When you write software, you test it on every platform you choose to support. If it doesn't work on a supported platform, then you take the time to fix it before release. It's not an "accident" when the software doesn't work on a platform you didn't bother to test on. That platform is being neglected by policy, not because of some "accident" in the code.

You guys test against non-stable versions of every browser before release?

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#165

Post by arp242 »

LeonM wrote: post #147

Nobody here commenting on the fact that Slack blocks Firefox as well for voice/video calls? I'm not a regular Slack user, but when I tried the voice call option earlier this week first I got a notification that they were switching to some new style of video conferencing called "Huddles", and it gave me an option to choose between "huddles" and "classic" video calls, which was confusing to begin with. I choose the lat…

It doesn't "block Firefox", it just doesn't work because it uses some now-deprecated experimental APIs for it that Firefox never implemented. The whole video stuff was kind of a mess for a time with different browsers implementing different things. This is probably why you shouldn't use experimental APIs, but people want features, so...

This was the status last time I used it a few months ago anyway; I believe they were planning on fixing it – they will have to sooner or later, since Chrome will remove these APIs at some point.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#166

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

prettyStandard wrote: post #83
nerdponx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupidity is only ever acceptable when it agrees with business objectives. Malice is the sensible default assumption when money is on the line.

"Break it but make it look like a mistake" /s

I wouldn't even use sarcasm here. It it is literally an actual and important part of the history of Microsoft:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#167

Post by clcaev »

Cpoll wrote: post #131
hinkley wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has a long and storied history of claiming superior business acumen when it suits their narrative, and then incompetence when that does. “We are the smartest developers in the world” I’m told used to be something you heard on campus, presumably during the recruiting process, and in the board room. But if the Justice department comes knocking, they turn into Steve Urkel. You can’t have it both ways, and they…

> Microsoft has a long and storied history of claiming superior business acumen when it suits their narrative, and then incompetence when that does. Not to say that they don't play dirty, but this isn't actually a contradiction. When you hire 100k workers, you're going to have the smartest developers in the world AND the Urkels. And odds are the smart developers aren't being put to work on the login page.

> And odds are the smart developers aren't being put to work on the login page.

This would be a standard testing procedure, not really about developer being smart. Large organizations cannot depend upon individual heroics.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#168

Post by MereInterest »

vorticalbox wrote: post #134
fatneckbeard wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do people do not remember Dr Dos ? if a coyote eats your cat, its probably not an accident. its more likely because it's a coyote and that's what coyotes do. it's in their nature.

As a counter point there is Hanlon's razor > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Key word: “adequately”. A company making an honest mistake a few times is adequately explained by stupidity. A company making the exact same “mistake” year after year, decade after decade, is not.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#169

Post by nforgerit »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #62

It's 2023. Why are we still doing user agent detection? We're supposed to do feature detection. userAgent is deprecated. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/u...

I get the best practice and why relying on the User Agent is helplessly flawed, but I've never come across a better way to get a sneak peek into the (first) Initial Page Request of a customer to your web app. E.g. if you'd wanted to improve the page performance and weight of your app, you'll want to keep unused js/css to near zero. If you'd rely on feature detection, your critical path for "showing the initial screen of the app" is bound to "download feature detect, parse it, execute it, fetch correct variants of your js/css packages, parse them, execute them, show screen". That's not cool, imho.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#170

Post by laserlight »

capableweb wrote: post #95
6c696e7578 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Hanlon's razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Imagine being a malicious actor in this world of ours, where as long as you could make it look like a potential mistake, you can get away with whatever, and people on the internet will simply say "Sounds like Hanlon's Razor" and you're basically in the clear :shrug:

I'll never understand Hanlon's razor. I've never seen any malice which cannot be explained by stupidity.
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