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Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

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Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#11

Post by userbinator »

realusername wrote: post #4

The worst is that just changing the user agent makes everything work.

I always thought having a UA header in the HTTP spec was a bad idea, because it just encourages things like this.

Unfortunately, I've tried browsing with no UA header, and a surprisingly large number of sites --- even ones without any sort of "app functionality" --- will return strange errors.

Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#12

Post by hypfer »

sodosopa wrote: post #8
sgt wrote: post #2

Also not supported in Safari. That's fine, I wasn't going to use Skype anyway.

That’s a larger problem since Safari has a larger userbase. Mozilla is generally at 5% Safari has been at 7-8%. Collectively, Microsoft is fine with losing potentially 12%

Yeah but to support safari, you need a way to test your web application with it.

The only way to do that is to buy a Mac. That's why a lot of sites don't support it.

Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#13

Post by vetinari »

sodosopa wrote: post #8
sgt wrote: post #2

Also not supported in Safari. That's fine, I wasn't going to use Skype anyway.

That’s a larger problem since Safari has a larger userbase. Mozilla is generally at 5% Safari has been at 7-8%. Collectively, Microsoft is fine with losing potentially 12%

On desktops, it is ~9,5% for Firefox and ~5% for Safari (4,5% for Edge). On mobile, I would rather use native app than web one. On desktop, the "native" app is Electron anyway.

Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#14

Post by hawski »

Bigpet wrote: post #5
realusername wrote: post #4

The worst is that just changing the user agent makes everything work.

Yeah, I've been doing the same thing. Although I only use it for text chatting in the browser. I don't know if video or audio calls work with it.

Video calls do work.

There is an extension, that will change the UA only for Skype: https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/firefox-web-skyp...

Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#16

Post by chrismeller »

sodosopa wrote: post #8
sgt wrote: post #2

Also not supported in Safari. That's fine, I wasn't going to use Skype anyway.

That’s a larger problem since Safari has a larger userbase. Mozilla is generally at 5% Safari has been at 7-8%. Collectively, Microsoft is fine with losing potentially 12%

Those are desktop and mobile numbers. Per [1] it’s more like 9 and 3% on desktop, which is really the only place you’d be doing this.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#18

Post by userbinator »

Santosh83 wrote: post #9

You can expect to see more and more of this as most of the world converges on the Chromium browser base. There is very little incentive for these companies to test for Firefox. Device users have spoken. They do not bother to change the defaults that come with their devices (Chrome, Edge, Safari) and do not really care about the deeper aspects of privacy or control or FOSS. At most they care about blocking ads, which…

I never thought I'd see the day when Microsoft would support the Google monopoly... despite all the hate IE got, at least it was from a company whose primary source of profit wasn't online advertising. To see MS give up on IE, and then Edge, was very disappointing.

Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#19

Post by shrikant »

lovelearning wrote: post #15

LinkedIn too behaves strangely on Firefox/Ubuntu. Endless login loop, even if all add-ons are disabled. I'm surprised that such popular websites treat Firefox so poorly.

Have you got a Pi-Hole setup or some such? LinkedIn on FF/Ubuntu works fine for me at home, but I think I had to whitelist something on Pi-Hole admin console.

Re: Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

#20

Post by bjornjaja »

Yeah, it’s pretty lame these days when web apps don’t bother to go the extra mile. The text chat feature still works so maybe they’ll add video support soon? Honestly I’d rather use Skype in the browser instead of installing it. It’s nice to have that stuff alongside webmail and office apps. I’m also an avid Firefox user and won’t switch from them. Mozilla has done amazing work advancing web technology.
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