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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

#81

Post by Spivak »

jacquesm wrote: post #59
Spivak wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nice sentiment but for actual products you end up having to say X versions of Y browsers are supported. It ends up being a feature requested by customer support teams that you prevent the app from working on unsupported browsers because users don’t read banners or pop ups and it generates pointless tickets. If you make your users change their UA there’s an awareness that things might break.

'unsupported browsers' are browsers that are old or broken. FireFox is a perfectly good browser, it is current and should be supported.

It's not really about that -- most shops don't support the latest version of Opera or Brave except by accident since they're Chromium backed. If they introduced a breaking incompatbility there is very little chance we would carry patches for them.

'supported browsers' are browsers that you lose customers if you don't support. You don't lose customers by telling them to switch to Chrome. Firefox's market share is small and the number of people who exclusively use Firefox and refuse to switch is vanishingly small.

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

#83

Post by rjzzleep »

gregdoesit wrote: post #67

Original Skype for Web developer here. I was part of the launch team who built the first version for this product in 2014[1]. Back then we supported Chrome, IE 9+, Safari and Firefox. Already we had internal debates to support Opera, but the decision was to focus on the largest browsers. For each browser, we had to add support in our standalone plugin, that was (and still is) required to install for audio/video calls…

>> For each browser, we had to add support in our standalone plugin, that was (and still is) required to install for audio/video calls

Wait Chrome doesn't need it right? I think the issue here is a codec no?

There's even people that have hangouts working in pidgin because it just uses webrtc.

I was trying to debug potential webrtc issues with skype web for pidgin.

It's one thing to say we wanted to do this and that but I don't see you guys reaching out to browsers upstream at all to work on a solution that doesn't need a plug-in.

Personally nowadays I just recommend everyone not to use Skype and many of my friends do the same despite being what we all used to use first.

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

#84

Post by jacquesm »

Spivak wrote: post #81
jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'unsupported browsers' are browsers that are old or broken. FireFox is a perfectly good browser, it is current and should be supported.

It's not really about that -- most shops don't support the latest version of Opera or Brave except by accident since they're Chromium backed. If they introduced a breaking incompatbility there is very little chance we would carry patches for them. 'supported browsers' are browsers that you lose customers if you don't support. You don't lose customers by telling them to switch to Chrome. Firefox's market share is smal…

> 'supported browsers' are browsers that you lose customers if you don't support.

That's a great attitude towards your users. No, you, the vendor, adapt to what your users bring.

That is the standard that the web was built around. Lazy developers that only wish to cater to the one browser that they have on their desk and that refuse to recognize that the world is a bit larger than their minimal view (including screenreaders and other accessibility device) should get another job. And if the company they work at is run competently they will (Microsoft apparently is not one of those, but that's not really news either).

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

#85

Post by taneq »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #61
realusername wrote: post #4

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

Facebook "kind of" works in Firefox, but there's loads of subtle breakage: for example pasting anything in Messenger (with ctrl+v) breaks the entire site for me. Middle-click kind-of but kind-of-doesn't work, depending on planetary alignments or some such :-/

What? I've been using Facebook in Firefox since IE6 stopped being cool, and it's always worked fine.

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

#86

Post by kerng »

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…

Same was said 20 years ago about Internet Explorer.

Even the arguments and counter-arguments are the same as 20 years ago. Users don't really have a choice anymore, they are quite often being manipulated (forced) to install Chrome.

Just browse the web with Firefox and go to Google sites.

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

#87

Post by gwbas1c »

gregdoesit wrote: post #67

Original Skype for Web developer here. I was part of the launch team who built the first version for this product in 2014[1]. Back then we supported Chrome, IE 9+, Safari and Firefox. Already we had internal debates to support Opera, but the decision was to focus on the largest browsers. For each browser, we had to add support in our standalone plugin, that was (and still is) required to install for audio/video calls…

Edge did the right thing. I can't stand it when a product comes bundled with a bunch of bloat that I'll never use.

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

#88

Post by gorhill »

aphextim wrote: post #52
phkahler wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of ads IS a compelling reason to switch. People will switch if the default is better. They dont want to get a new browser, pick and install an ad blocker, then configure that stuff. People will stop at the slightest uncertainty. I bet if there was a one-click to install firefox with ad-blocker and some other stuff enabled by default people would start switching. Installing, extensions, configuration, thos…

>I bet if there was a one-click to install firefox with ad-blocker and some other stuff enabled by default people would start switching. Check out Brave, been getting my friends to switch as it has a built in blocker that is even more verbose than ublock. Works on mobile as well which helps them save data and load websites faster. https://brave.com/

> has a built in blocker that is even more verbose than ublock

I don't understand this sentence. What does "more verbose" mean?

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

#89

Post by zsrxx »

cameronbrown wrote: post #70
gregdoesit wrote: post #67

Original Skype for Web developer here. I was part of the launch team who built the first version for this product in 2014[1]. Back then we supported Chrome, IE 9+, Safari and Firefox. Already we had internal debates to support Opera, but the decision was to focus on the largest browsers. For each browser, we had to add support in our standalone plugin, that was (and still is) required to install for audio/video calls…

> no dependencies and prioritised performance above anything Edge was in a weird position where it somehow looked fast but felt sluggish. A real shame it didn't work out though.

It felt sluggish because they were forced to use the Metro UI toolkit. Had they used Win32, it would have blown Firefox and maybe Chrome out of the water.

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

#90

Post by crtasm »

aphextim wrote: post #53
aphextim wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I bet if there was a one-click to install firefox with ad-blocker and some other stuff enabled by default people would start switching. Check out Brave, been getting my friends to switch as it has a built in blocker that is even more verbose than ublock. Works on mobile as well which helps them save data and load websites faster. https://brave.com/

It even has a built in 3 node "Tor" browsing for their private windows if you want.

Do you just mean standard Tor? I found an announcement saying it was a beta feature, if it's considered stable now that's great.
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