Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 753 posts

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#701

Post by hnbad »

coffeeling wrote: post #523
hnbad wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bar" is an overstatement if you like me were reading that as one of those early 2000s era browser toolbars. A recent Edge update added a fairly large and persistent Bing icon to the right end of the browser's menu bar. It uses a speech bubble design and is likely part of the push for AI chat powered Bing search. It's obnoxious that you can't hide it but it's more of an eyesore than an actual problem.

You can hide it. Settings->Sidebar->Discover

Oh thanks! Frankly the most annoying parts of it were that it made it harder to reach for the overflow menu (which was previously the right-most icon) and that it auto-opens the sidebar on hover delay (which then requires clicking to dismiss).

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#702

Post by yarg »

jasonm23 wrote: post #690
sn_master wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the cost of licensing Windows which makes small-sized non-Windows VMs cheaper, there's been a strong pro-Linux bias in academia for a long time that nobody likes to talk about.

The choice is open, free vs closed, stifling, costly, dark-patterns. I don't think that's bias.

I just moved to openSUSE.

It's really nice not having advertisements in my start menu.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#703

Post by dathinab »

weberer wrote: post #332
kps wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect VSCode is a baited hook. Get enough developers dependent on it, then degrade it on Linux, and offer WSL as close enough to have people switch their OS rather than their editor. With developers on Windows, cloud follows.

They've already been doing this with Teams. Their native Linux client has less features, like screen blurring, or being able to view more than 4 users at a time. Thankfully you can get around this by using the web version, but who knows how long it will be until they do some user-agent shenanigans to mess with you again.

Their native linux client is an outdated version of their web client using a outdated version of electron (I think it was electron), i.e. it's not native do not use it, use the browser.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#704

Post by reportgunner »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #98
isanjay wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say Linux doesn't have this type of nonsense at all.

Mmm, there's some of this stuff in Ubuntu, forcing people to use snaps.

Isn't ubuntu Microsoft ?

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#705

Post by ymolodtsov »

It's like there are two parts of Microsoft. The one is truly headed by Nadella. They focus on Microsoft 365, Teams and other revenue-generating stuff. And there's the old Microsoft, which still thinks Windows and Edge adoption matter.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#706

Post by reportgunner »

aceazzameen wrote: post #425

Windows 11 does this too, and it's infuriating. If you click a link in settings, it will only open in Edge. As a Firefox user, I'd like to keep Edge as an alternative to check websites with. But this shady nonsense makes me want to burn every last bit off my system.

Can you replace the edge executable with a symlink or a copy of your preferred browser ?

A common trick we used to use back in the day was to rename the microsoft executables that we didn't want to start automatically, it silently failed and everything was fine until next batch of updates which detected this and fixed it.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#707

Post by dathinab »

kps wrote: post #292
dathinab wrote: post #178

So anyone still thinking MS is now all good and it's not an issue that it own github + vscode + a endless list of other things relevant for especially smaller development companies? Microsoft will do whats best for them. Temporary this includes embrace open source to some degree and being reasonable nice to Linux. For example WSL can help with trying out Linux and help cross platform devs on Windows to develop for Li…

I suspect VSCode is a baited hook. Get enough developers dependent on it, then degrade it on Linux, and offer WSL as close enough to have people switch their OS rather than their editor. With developers on Windows, cloud follows.

If they try this it will likely fail very hard, because one of the selling point of it is that it's a thin IDE.

But this means most vscode users can easily switch away, e.g. to sublime.

Sure there is the plugin ecosystem, but at least how plugins work currently you don't want to install many of them for security reasons/trust.

And in my experience some of the best plugins are not only not from MS but they provide features vscode already roughly supports but in a lacking way.

MS might have some luck with remote dev features (which are also not in the open source version). But they will have a hard time on this vector, because I have seen upcomming new IDEs which do handles that better in ways I'm not sure vscode will be able to beat or get on-par with.

This leave their remote in-browser IDE dev setup thingy in colaboration with GitHub, that is a killer feature. But IMHO is one of this things which only will become a main selling point if people _only_ use this environment. But it's a in-browser interface so not OS specific so probably not so useful to lock people in.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#708

Post by dathinab »

eptcyka wrote: post #429
anaganisk wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL is a literal VM now, that runs based on Hyper-V afaik, if Vscode degrades on Linux, I'm just not sure how it won't affect WSL too. Whatever happened to using vim,emacs, intelliJ, or tons of other Vscode forks. Vscode is not the baited hook, it's the exclusive integrations (extensions) like remote containers, remote containers etc that are nice to have features not workflow breaking stuff.

VSCode runs well on host and just uses SSH to have a remote Dev env in the Linux VM. At this point, a MS advocate might argue that we don't even need vscode to run on Linux at all. I think their next push won't be against Foss people, but to get people on the cloud so they get a recurring revenue stream and their customers are hooked deeper still.

> VSCode runs well on host and just uses SSH to have a remote Dev env in the Linux VM. At this point, a MS advocate might argue that we don't even need vscode to run on Linux at all.

Intellij has been doing that since years. Including extensive language specific integrations to e.g. make remote python debugging nicer.

> I think their next push won't be against Foss people, but to get people on the cloud so they get a recurring revenue stream and their customers are hooked deeper still.

I agree, something something GitHub cloud editor. But that's perfect. Perfect for selling Chrome Books instead of Windows machines, as they are cheaper, less maintenance cost and often more secure...

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#709

Post by arendtio »

0x457 wrote: post #630
NikolaNovak wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your premise. I have an iPhone (forced upon me by work) and it's ridiculous how many links still try to open in safari or Apple maps. I've tried to configure it for years and I've literally uninstalled Apple maps, but half the time iPhone keeps wanting me to reinstall it when I click a link or address. And a lot of url links open in safari instead of chrome or Firefox. Same with many other things - I…

Yes, but Apple offers a neat well maintained garden that is the greatest thing as long as everything you need is there, and you don't eat any apples. MS looks at it and thinks their frat party mansion (3 bedroom duplex) can do the same. Apple gets away with it because that what their target audience want. MS target audience doesn't want it. If I wanted a walled garden - I would use Apple, they clearly know how to mai…

Actually I don't get how Apple always gets away with the sh*t they are doing.

All Smartphones on this planet use the same USB-C charging port except iPhones. And as far as I remember, the European Union requires the manufacturers by law to use USB-C, because before the law every phone came with a different power adapter.

Next example, OS and browsers: Every Operating System has to offer the user the choice of which browser they want to use. Except for Apple, they offer a choice of which UI you want to use, but on iOS the browser engine is always Safari (which kills competition hard on iOS devices).

No, I am not a big fan of that Microsoft move, because I think they should respect the users browser choice. But I am even less a fan of Apple doing things nobody else is allowed (for good reason).

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#710

Post by dehrmann »

makeitdouble wrote: post #321
dehrmann wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory on this is it has something to do with battery life. I can't think of another reason they'd limit browser engines.

Don't know if serious or not, but I'll bite. Apple was in deep troubles when IE was all the rage, you needed IE to access your bank's site, your company's intranet, so many site that were strictly IE only. Microsoft gifting them an implementation of IE was a mild grace, but still wasn't enough. Not having a browser compatible with 99% of the web was an issue pushing people away from Macs. They learned their lesson, a…

Firefox and Chrome accounted for a third of browser marker share when the iPhone came out. It came out with no App Store, and there was no guarantee MS would develop IE for iOS.
Post reply on HN