5 ms·

I use Webex from Chrome every day (macOS). It works great. It's the best conferencing software I've used. I didn't even know they had any kind of Linux support

by cgh 10y ago

I use Webex from Chrome every day (macOS). It works great. It's the best conferencing software I've used. I didn't even know they had any kind of Linux support. Internally, Cisco only supports macOS and Windows on the desktop so it's no wonder the Linux support is bad. If you absolutely need to use Webex then clearly using desktop Linux is a bad idea.

fulafel 10y ago
How did they manage to make a Chrome extension that works on Mac but not Linux? Chrome extensions can't contain platform native code, and Chrome doesn't support other kinds of plugins anymore.
- flukus 10y ago
  It's an "extension" that launches the client app.
  - tfar 10y ago
    Why do you need a extension for that? Wouldn't it be enough for the client app to register a custom URL scheme handler and their website using that custom URL scheme to open the client?
    - josteink 10y ago
      You can, but that results in a ton of UI where the user has to navigate between "allow" custom protocol and then selecting what applications are allowed to launch via this protocol. Currently it's a maze of dialogs only technical people are able to navigate successfully. Expecting people already in need of support to manage to bypass this deliberate inconvenience is simply unrealistic. The company I work for used to maintain a solution based on this approach. It worked well until browser-vendors started tightening up security. After that we had to come up with a different solution all together, because almost no users managed to configure our integration successfully. (And that rewrite was a lot of work, so I can see why Cisco/WebEx has been postponing it as much as possible)
      - flukus 10y ago
        Couldn't the also have a webx file extension and launch it that way? Or abuse copy/paste abilities? The former would allow easy desktop bookmarks as well. They could even, god forbid, accept that it's not possible instead of coming up with "clever" ways to make it possible.
    - csydas 10y ago
      I don't know exactly what the extension does behind the scenes, but I use Webex daily for my job and almost all my clients suggest just using the temporary application to join is a better experience by far. The extension constantly fails to launch the application correctly and from what I'm told does some other non-sense that causes CPU spikes and connectivity issues. It also doesn't inspire confidence that this is the screenshot of the Chrome Extension they give users to encourage them to use the extension: http://imgur.com/a/Rsy3H http://imgur.com/a/Rsy3H (For those who don't want to click, the screenshot showing the install has the rating from the Chrome Webstore, which is currently at 2 stars) I mean, I applaud the honesty of showing us what users have rated it, but it just seems kind of sloppy to me.

by cgh 10y ago

fulafel 10y ago

How did they manage to make a Chrome extension that works on Mac but not Linux? Chrome extensions can't contain platform native code, and Chrome doesn't support other kinds of plugins anymore.

flukus 10y ago
It's an "extension" that launches the client app.
- tfar 10y ago
  Why do you need a extension for that? Wouldn't it be enough for the client app to register a custom URL scheme handler and their website using that custom URL scheme to open the client?
  - josteink 10y ago
    You can, but that results in a ton of UI where the user has to navigate between "allow" custom protocol and then selecting what applications are allowed to launch via this protocol. Currently it's a maze of dialogs only technical people are able to navigate successfully. Expecting people already in need of support to manage to bypass this deliberate inconvenience is simply unrealistic. The company I work for used to maintain a solution based on this approach. It worked well until browser-vendors started tightening up security. After that we had to come up with a different solution all together, because almost no users managed to configure our integration successfully. (And that rewrite was a lot of work, so I can see why Cisco/WebEx has been postponing it as much as possible)
    - flukus 10y ago
      Couldn't the also have a webx file extension and launch it that way? Or abuse copy/paste abilities? The former would allow easy desktop bookmarks as well. They could even, god forbid, accept that it's not possible instead of coming up with "clever" ways to make it possible.
  - csydas 10y ago
    I don't know exactly what the extension does behind the scenes, but I use Webex daily for my job and almost all my clients suggest just using the temporary application to join is a better experience by far. The extension constantly fails to launch the application correctly and from what I'm told does some other non-sense that causes CPU spikes and connectivity issues. It also doesn't inspire confidence that this is the screenshot of the Chrome Extension they give users to encourage them to use the extension: http://imgur.com/a/Rsy3H http://imgur.com/a/Rsy3H (For those who don't want to click, the screenshot showing the install has the rating from the Chrome Webstore, which is currently at 2 stars) I mean, I applaud the honesty of showing us what users have rated it, but it just seems kind of sloppy to me.