22 ms·

Tell HN: Skype on web does not support Firefox

280 points by gyosifov 7y ago

The Skype for web -> https://web.skype.com/ does not support Firefox. Urges the user to use Microsoft Edge or Chrome.

sgt 7y ago
Also not supported in Safari. That's fine, I wasn't going to use Skype anyway.
- sodosopa 7y ago
  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%
  - hypfer 7y ago
    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.
    - agloeregrets 7y ago
      Browserstack.com Also 50% of the US mobile browser market. (Don’t forget iPhone and iPad.) This is a bs excuse. The only really hard one to test with is IE11, simply because the dev tools are so incredibly slow on a web app.
    - sgt 7y ago
      I think Microsoft can afford it. I heard at some point they were Apple's largest corporate client for Macintoshes.
    - sodosopa 7y ago
      That’s actually incorrect. I used Browserstack for testing our web apps. Why buy a Mac when you could basically rent one for your browser testing. We script it out and test out pre-prod web apps.
  - vetinari 7y ago
    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.
    - gmueckl 7y ago
      At least the native app for Linux comes with a few shared libraries in addition to Electron. So it's not JavaScript all the way down like the website has to be.
    - Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
      Though frankly I'm fed up with installing yet another mobile app for whatever conferencing system someone wants to use today.
  - chrismeller 7y ago
    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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
  - mcv 7y ago
    They don't just lose that 12%, but also the people they want to talk to.
    - The_rationalist 7y ago
      12% for Firefox marketshare? Source? Last time I checked it was ~4.4% (desktop + mobile)
amaccuish 7y ago
You can spoof your UA and it'll work, at least for audio, and maybe video, IIRC. Not really an answer though I know.
realusername 7y ago
The worst is that just changing the user agent makes everything work.
- Bigpet 7y ago
  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.
  - hawski 7y ago
    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-skype/ https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/firefox-web-skyp...
    - userbinator 7y ago
      There are plenty of extensions that will let you change the UA for any site; having yet another one with such a narrow function seems to me like those "we have a smartphone app too" whose only purpose is to open the browser to their site.
      - hawski 7y ago
        But if it's your only use of such a thing, as it is for me, it's just one click away. You can also feel reasonably safe as the extension works only on Skype's web sites per Web Extension manifest.
      - andrewshadura 7y ago
        Just add this to your prefs.js/about:config user_pref("general.useragent.override.web.skype.com", "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.77 Safari/537.36");
- userbinator 7y ago
  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.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Would be interested to know how successful they are at switching people to Edge (not just with this, but in general).
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  I recently had to use Windows 10 for some .NET work and found it really surprising that it nags so much when changing the default browser. Not just in the control panel prompt, but repeatedly afterwards via notifications and even on the login screen. Hint: Your OS shouldn't do this. It should stay out of your way and honour your choices.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    The Windows login screen does other startling things, too. I have also seen it display sneaky advertising for Netflix.
anatolinicolae 7y ago
Thanks for the info!
Santosh83 7y ago
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 is not a compelling reason to switch.
- userbinator 7y ago
  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.
  - loudmax 7y ago
    It was from a company whose primary source of profit is vendor lock-in. Poorly supporting or not supporting open standards is SOP for Microsoft.
    - userbinator 7y ago
      Better than advertising and being anti-user. I've long realised that "open" anything doesn't really matter if it works against you. Example: Google trying to standardise how it hides URLs from the user (yes, really. https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering ) There's also that whole commotion about including DRM in the HTML spec.
      - loudmax 7y ago
        Lock-in is anti-user. If you don't like Chrome/Edge, then switch to Firefox. Open standards give you have that freedom. Unless, of course, you can't switch to Firefox because the set of people you need to work with are communicating using proprietary protocols, eg. Skype. Or developing software you need that only works on proprietary operating systems. Now you're locked in.
LeonM 7y ago
I remember reading about this in the early 00's when msn.com and some other MS websites did the same. Changing the UA made the site work just fine. History repeating itself.
lovelearning 7y ago
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.
- shrikant 7y ago
  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.
  - lovelearning 7y ago
    Don't have Pi-Hole. DNS-over-HTTPS is enabled.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  Fellow Firefox/Ubuntu user here. Are you blocking Captchas somehow? This is usually my problem (and specifically very recently with LinkedIn, hence the comment).
  - lovelearning 7y ago
    I don't think I have changed anything related to captchas, at least not intentionally. I see a lot of "Request to access cookies or storage on https://www.linkedin.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/ was blocked because of custom cookie permission." in console. However, my Preferences > Content Blocking is set to "Standard"; no add-ons are enabled; not a private window. I have DNS-over-HTTPS enabled. There are no linkedin-related entries in about:config.
    - floatingatoll 7y ago
      The list of cookie exceptions (deny or allow) isn’t stored in about:config. Try these steps? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Privacy/Storage_access_policy/Errors/CookieBlockedByPermission https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Pri...
tpaschalis 7y ago
Also, Skype for Business is being replaced with Microsoft Teams. Bold prediction : Skype has less than five years of life left.
- albertshin 7y ago
  You wager they'll shut down the consumer facing portion too? It's a fairly decent brand. Although I guess with VoIP so ubiquitously free (WhatsApp, etc) I'm not sure how they monetize these days...
  - mathw 7y ago
    It's a well-known brand but Microsoft have dragged it through the mud since they acquired it and among those I know it now has a reputation for being extremely unreliable. They might want to retire it rather than fight to rehabilitate its image.
    - albertshin 7y ago
      True, on second thought, I found myself saying let's Skype soon and end up using some other app during facetime...
- corey_moncure 7y ago
  As for Microsoft Teams, they claim video conferencing and desktop sharing is not supported in the browser on Linux, but spoofing the user agent enables them. They also do not provide a standalone app for Linux, despite the fact it's an Electron app, yet here is the standalone client supported by one individual that works perfectly. https://snapcraft.io/teams-for-linux https://snapcraft.io/teams-for-linux It really makes you think!
bjornjaja 7y ago
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.
pedrocr 7y ago
This is really annoying because Skype video inside a Windows VM basically doesn't work. Encoding/decoding probably falls back to software and is much too slow.
kerng 7y ago
"Urges the user to use Microsoft Edge or Chrome." Meaning "Chrome only" is the strategy here (since Edge, mshtml.dll, as unique rendering engine will disappear). Welcome back to the past - have seen this all before in the late 90s.
- stanski 7y ago
  Suddenly it's okay to develop for just one browser again. Even though browsers are lot more standardized now than they were before, it's still okay to do it. Bizarre.
Havoc 7y ago
Skype has been truly rubbish lately anyway. I generally use free whatsapp calls over my paid skype credits because it's such a stark quality difference. No idea what they're doing but it's terrible.
blentrop 7y ago
Same thing with GoToMetting
geekit 7y ago
It's happening!
dhimes 7y ago
OT, but check out the comments in the code. It doesn't instill confidence: // Adjusts the position of the given element WebDeveloper.Common.adjustElementPosition = function(element, xPosition, yPosition, offset) { // If the element is set if(element) { var contentWindow = WebDeveloper.Common.getContentWindow(); var innerHeight = contentWindow.innerHeight; var innerWidth = contentWindow.innerWidth; var offsetHeight = element.offsetHeight; var offsetWidth = element.offsetWidth; var offsetX = contentWindow.pageXOffset; var offsetY = contentWindow.pageYOffset; // If the x position is less than 0 if(xPosition < 0) { xPosition = 0; } // If the y position is less than 0 if(yPosition < 0) { yPosition = 0; } // If the element will fit at the x position if(xPosition + offsetWidth + offset + 5 < innerWidth + offsetX) { element.style.left = xPosition + offset + "px"; } else { element.style.left = innerWidth + offsetX - offsetWidth - offset + "px"; }
- shawabawa3 7y ago
  // If the x position is less than 0 if(xPosition < 0) Looks like they have some kind of policy of at least 10% of code lines must be comments or something
  - Crinus 7y ago
    I write such comments sometimes, the reason is simple: when a codebase has a lot of comments in general comments often act as separators of "groups of code" (and often read like short prose), so seeing a bit of code not having them feels unbalanced and i add some generic comment. The comment acts more as a separator or header, in a "this is the part where we do XYZ", than anything else. Also this has to be taken into account with syntax highlighting where comments are made to stand out. It doesn't work that much when comments use a faded out color (like some schemes use) or without syntax highlighting at all (well, except perhaps if you use ====== ALL CAPS COMMENTS ====== :-P).
    - 7y ago
soliton4 7y ago
who is using skype anyway?
- wyclif 7y ago
  Skype has 300 million monthly active users https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/skype-publicly-launches-screen-sharing-on-ios-and-android/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/skype-publicly-launches-sc...
gregdoesit 7y ago
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. There was a small maintenance cost per browser, which was a bigger one whenever changes to the plug-in were made. I left Skype/Microsoft a long time ago and Microsoft announced in March they will drop support for Firefox[2]. I can only speculate, but it’s likely due to not wanting to pay the maintenance cost of this product on an ongoing basis. Not directly related story from building Skype for Web: a big internal battle those days was us vs the Edge team. We wanted Edge to ship the Skype plugin as default, making calls seamless for Edge users, not needing to install a plugin (we saw large drops in adoption due to this plugin). Chrome already did exactly this with Hangouts back in the day and we saw it as them eating our lunch. This was at the time of Steve Balmer’s Microsoft, where collaboration between different orgs was difficult and facing strong political headwind. We got nowhere with the Edge team, who wanted no dependencies and prioritised performance above anything like this - and also wanted to hit their own KPIs, which had nothing to do with Skype users preferring to use Edge. We reasoned, pleaded, argued, steamed, shouted names and even used the "C" argument ("but... but... but... even Chrome does it!"). No avail. So a separate plugin install it was, giving people zero incentive to use a Microsoft browser for a Microsoft product. The Edge team were pleased they did not have to cater for another dependency and their roadmap remained unchanged. We were frustrated and had little doubt which brodwser will keep gaining market share - being certain it will not be IE/Edge. Other not directly related story: a few years ago I wrote in detail my take on why Skype failed, here on HN. Read it on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927600 [1] https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2014/11/14/7219779/skype-for-web-beta-launch https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp... [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/microsofts-new-skype-for-web-client-an-early-taste-of-the-browser-monoculture/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/microsofts-new-skype...
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  > 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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
benologist 7y ago
I use this - https://mybrowseraddon.com/custom-useragent-string.html https://mybrowseraddon.com/custom-useragent-string.html - to fake Chrome UA and it works. You only need it faking your UA to open the web version of Skype then you can change it back.
iicc 7y ago
Jitsi Meet supports Firefox. https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/
- dhimes 7y ago
  Looks cool. How does jitsi make money?
- lightedman 7y ago
  Last time I used Jitsi about 4 months ago it brought my FX-9370 w/64GB RAM to a crawl. Have they fixed their absolutely horrid web client?
joaobeno 7y ago
Tweeted them about this, their response: "Request/vote for this feature on our community site", with the following link: https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-ideas/suggestions/36658774-preview-firefox-support https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-i...
- extra88 7y ago
  I don't know what "Preview" is but it sounds more specific than supporting Skype for Web in Firefox overall. There are a number of other UserVoice ideas about Firefox support. Microsoft should consolidate the ones that are essentially saying the same thing. https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-ideas?query=firefox https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-i...
sj4nz 7y ago
I gave up on Skype a long long time ago. Aside from the dumpster fires of their clients, their attempts to manage the spam/bot problem make legitimate use nearly impossible because they keep disabling "new, lightly used" accounts.
betimsl 7y ago
Instead of switching the browser. I switch the app. In this example I stopped using skype. Whoever wanted to contact me on skype, I simply say that I don't have an account there. Let's meet somewhere else.
IMTDb 7y ago
If it only support chrome and derivatives, it should be called Skype on Chrome not Skype on Web
lukaszkups 7y ago
Can someone explain me why Skype needs a plugin to be installed to use it over the web? WebRTC/Sip.js works pretty well these times across all (major) browsers I think?

280 points by gyosifov 7y ago

The Skype for web -> https://web.skype.com/ does not support Firefox. Urges the user to use Microsoft Edge or Chrome.

sgt 7y ago

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

sodosopa 7y ago
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%
- hypfer 7y ago
  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.
  - agloeregrets 7y ago
    Browserstack.com Also 50% of the US mobile browser market. (Don’t forget iPhone and iPad.) This is a bs excuse. The only really hard one to test with is IE11, simply because the dev tools are so incredibly slow on a web app.
  - sgt 7y ago
    I think Microsoft can afford it. I heard at some point they were Apple's largest corporate client for Macintoshes.
  - sodosopa 7y ago
    That’s actually incorrect. I used Browserstack for testing our web apps. Why buy a Mac when you could basically rent one for your browser testing. We script it out and test out pre-prod web apps.
- vetinari 7y ago
  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.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    At least the native app for Linux comes with a few shared libraries in addition to Electron. So it's not JavaScript all the way down like the website has to be.
  - Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
    Though frankly I'm fed up with installing yet another mobile app for whatever conferencing system someone wants to use today.
- chrismeller 7y ago
  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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
- mcv 7y ago
  They don't just lose that 12%, but also the people they want to talk to.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    12% for Firefox marketshare? Source? Last time I checked it was ~4.4% (desktop + mobile)

amaccuish 7y ago

You can spoof your UA and it'll work, at least for audio, and maybe video, IIRC. Not really an answer though I know.

realusername 7y ago

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

Bigpet 7y ago
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.
- hawski 7y ago
  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-skype/ https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/firefox-web-skyp...
  - userbinator 7y ago
    There are plenty of extensions that will let you change the UA for any site; having yet another one with such a narrow function seems to me like those "we have a smartphone app too" whose only purpose is to open the browser to their site.
    - hawski 7y ago
      But if it's your only use of such a thing, as it is for me, it's just one click away. You can also feel reasonably safe as the extension works only on Skype's web sites per Web Extension manifest.
    - andrewshadura 7y ago
      Just add this to your prefs.js/about:config user_pref("general.useragent.override.web.skype.com", "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.77 Safari/537.36");
userbinator 7y ago
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.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

Would be interested to know how successful they are at switching people to Edge (not just with this, but in general).

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
I recently had to use Windows 10 for some .NET work and found it really surprising that it nags so much when changing the default browser. Not just in the control panel prompt, but repeatedly afterwards via notifications and even on the login screen. Hint: Your OS shouldn't do this. It should stay out of your way and honour your choices.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  The Windows login screen does other startling things, too. I have also seen it display sneaky advertising for Netflix.

anatolinicolae 7y ago

Thanks for the info!

Santosh83 7y ago

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 is not a compelling reason to switch.

userbinator 7y ago
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.
- loudmax 7y ago
  It was from a company whose primary source of profit is vendor lock-in. Poorly supporting or not supporting open standards is SOP for Microsoft.
  - userbinator 7y ago
    Better than advertising and being anti-user. I've long realised that "open" anything doesn't really matter if it works against you. Example: Google trying to standardise how it hides URLs from the user (yes, really. https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering ) There's also that whole commotion about including DRM in the HTML spec.
    - loudmax 7y ago
      Lock-in is anti-user. If you don't like Chrome/Edge, then switch to Firefox. Open standards give you have that freedom. Unless, of course, you can't switch to Firefox because the set of people you need to work with are communicating using proprietary protocols, eg. Skype. Or developing software you need that only works on proprietary operating systems. Now you're locked in.

LeonM 7y ago

I remember reading about this in the early 00's when msn.com and some other MS websites did the same. Changing the UA made the site work just fine. History repeating itself.

lovelearning 7y ago

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.

shrikant 7y ago
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.
- lovelearning 7y ago
  Don't have Pi-Hole. DNS-over-HTTPS is enabled.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
Fellow Firefox/Ubuntu user here. Are you blocking Captchas somehow? This is usually my problem (and specifically very recently with LinkedIn, hence the comment).
- lovelearning 7y ago
  I don't think I have changed anything related to captchas, at least not intentionally. I see a lot of "Request to access cookies or storage on https://www.linkedin.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/ was blocked because of custom cookie permission." in console. However, my Preferences > Content Blocking is set to "Standard"; no add-ons are enabled; not a private window. I have DNS-over-HTTPS enabled. There are no linkedin-related entries in about:config.
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    The list of cookie exceptions (deny or allow) isn’t stored in about:config. Try these steps? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Privacy/Storage_access_policy/Errors/CookieBlockedByPermission https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Pri...

tpaschalis 7y ago

Also, Skype for Business is being replaced with Microsoft Teams. Bold prediction : Skype has less than five years of life left.

albertshin 7y ago
You wager they'll shut down the consumer facing portion too? It's a fairly decent brand. Although I guess with VoIP so ubiquitously free (WhatsApp, etc) I'm not sure how they monetize these days...
- mathw 7y ago
  It's a well-known brand but Microsoft have dragged it through the mud since they acquired it and among those I know it now has a reputation for being extremely unreliable. They might want to retire it rather than fight to rehabilitate its image.
  - albertshin 7y ago
    True, on second thought, I found myself saying let's Skype soon and end up using some other app during facetime...
corey_moncure 7y ago
As for Microsoft Teams, they claim video conferencing and desktop sharing is not supported in the browser on Linux, but spoofing the user agent enables them. They also do not provide a standalone app for Linux, despite the fact it's an Electron app, yet here is the standalone client supported by one individual that works perfectly. https://snapcraft.io/teams-for-linux https://snapcraft.io/teams-for-linux It really makes you think!

bjornjaja 7y ago

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.

pedrocr 7y ago

This is really annoying because Skype video inside a Windows VM basically doesn't work. Encoding/decoding probably falls back to software and is much too slow.

kerng 7y ago

"Urges the user to use Microsoft Edge or Chrome." Meaning "Chrome only" is the strategy here (since Edge, mshtml.dll, as unique rendering engine will disappear). Welcome back to the past - have seen this all before in the late 90s.

stanski 7y ago
Suddenly it's okay to develop for just one browser again. Even though browsers are lot more standardized now than they were before, it's still okay to do it. Bizarre.

Havoc 7y ago

Skype has been truly rubbish lately anyway. I generally use free whatsapp calls over my paid skype credits because it's such a stark quality difference. No idea what they're doing but it's terrible.

blentrop 7y ago

Same thing with GoToMetting

geekit 7y ago

It's happening!

dhimes 7y ago

OT, but check out the comments in the code. It doesn't instill confidence: // Adjusts the position of the given element WebDeveloper.Common.adjustElementPosition = function(element, xPosition, yPosition, offset) { // If the element is set if(element) { var contentWindow = WebDeveloper.Common.getContentWindow(); var innerHeight = contentWindow.innerHeight; var innerWidth = contentWindow.innerWidth; var offsetHeight = element.offsetHeight; var offsetWidth = element.offsetWidth; var offsetX = contentWindow.pageXOffset; var offsetY = contentWindow.pageYOffset; // If the x position is less than 0 if(xPosition < 0) { xPosition = 0; } // If the y position is less than 0 if(yPosition < 0) { yPosition = 0; } // If the element will fit at the x position if(xPosition + offsetWidth + offset + 5 < innerWidth + offsetX) { element.style.left = xPosition + offset + "px"; } else { element.style.left = innerWidth + offsetX - offsetWidth - offset + "px"; }

shawabawa3 7y ago
// If the x position is less than 0 if(xPosition < 0) Looks like they have some kind of policy of at least 10% of code lines must be comments or something
- Crinus 7y ago
  I write such comments sometimes, the reason is simple: when a codebase has a lot of comments in general comments often act as separators of "groups of code" (and often read like short prose), so seeing a bit of code not having them feels unbalanced and i add some generic comment. The comment acts more as a separator or header, in a "this is the part where we do XYZ", than anything else. Also this has to be taken into account with syntax highlighting where comments are made to stand out. It doesn't work that much when comments use a faded out color (like some schemes use) or without syntax highlighting at all (well, except perhaps if you use ====== ALL CAPS COMMENTS ====== :-P).
  - 7y ago

soliton4 7y ago

who is using skype anyway?

wyclif 7y ago
Skype has 300 million monthly active users https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/skype-publicly-launches-screen-sharing-on-ios-and-android/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/skype-publicly-launches-sc...

gregdoesit 7y ago

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. There was a small maintenance cost per browser, which was a bigger one whenever changes to the plug-in were made. I left Skype/Microsoft a long time ago and Microsoft announced in March they will drop support for Firefox[2]. I can only speculate, but it’s likely due to not wanting to pay the maintenance cost of this product on an ongoing basis. Not directly related story from building Skype for Web: a big internal battle those days was us vs the Edge team. We wanted Edge to ship the Skype plugin as default, making calls seamless for Edge users, not needing to install a plugin (we saw large drops in adoption due to this plugin). Chrome already did exactly this with Hangouts back in the day and we saw it as them eating our lunch. This was at the time of Steve Balmer’s Microsoft, where collaboration between different orgs was difficult and facing strong political headwind. We got nowhere with the Edge team, who wanted no dependencies and prioritised performance above anything like this - and also wanted to hit their own KPIs, which had nothing to do with Skype users preferring to use Edge. We reasoned, pleaded, argued, steamed, shouted names and even used the "C" argument ("but... but... but... even Chrome does it!"). No avail. So a separate plugin install it was, giving people zero incentive to use a Microsoft browser for a Microsoft product. The Edge team were pleased they did not have to cater for another dependency and their roadmap remained unchanged. We were frustrated and had little doubt which brodwser will keep gaining market share - being certain it will not be IE/Edge. Other not directly related story: a few years ago I wrote in detail my take on why Skype failed, here on HN. Read it on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927600 [1] https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2014/11/14/7219779/skype-for-web-beta-launch https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp... [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/microsofts-new-skype-for-web-client-an-early-taste-of-the-browser-monoculture/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/microsofts-new-skype...

cameronbrown 7y ago
> 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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

benologist 7y ago

I use this - https://mybrowseraddon.com/custom-useragent-string.html https://mybrowseraddon.com/custom-useragent-string.html - to fake Chrome UA and it works. You only need it faking your UA to open the web version of Skype then you can change it back.

iicc 7y ago

Jitsi Meet supports Firefox. https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/

dhimes 7y ago
Looks cool. How does jitsi make money?
lightedman 7y ago
Last time I used Jitsi about 4 months ago it brought my FX-9370 w/64GB RAM to a crawl. Have they fixed their absolutely horrid web client?

joaobeno 7y ago

Tweeted them about this, their response: "Request/vote for this feature on our community site", with the following link: https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-ideas/suggestions/36658774-preview-firefox-support https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-i...

extra88 7y ago
I don't know what "Preview" is but it sounds more specific than supporting Skype for Web in Firefox overall. There are a number of other UserVoice ideas about Firefox support. Microsoft should consolidate the ones that are essentially saying the same thing. https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-ideas?query=firefox https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-i...

sj4nz 7y ago

I gave up on Skype a long long time ago. Aside from the dumpster fires of their clients, their attempts to manage the spam/bot problem make legitimate use nearly impossible because they keep disabling "new, lightly used" accounts.

betimsl 7y ago

Instead of switching the browser. I switch the app. In this example I stopped using skype. Whoever wanted to contact me on skype, I simply say that I don't have an account there. Let's meet somewhere else.

IMTDb 7y ago

If it only support chrome and derivatives, it should be called Skype on Chrome not Skype on Web

lukaszkups 7y ago

Can someone explain me why Skype needs a plugin to be installed to use it over the web? WebRTC/Sip.js works pretty well these times across all (major) browsers I think?