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Show HN: Zoom Redirector
- CPLX 7y agoI used to get pretty annoyed that Zoom made download the stupid client to join a video chat but now that I’m using it constantly I’m learning that there’s a pretty great reason, the native app is so superior in terms of user experience.
- thedance 7y agoOr is it just that the Zoom web experience is really poor? Google Meet and BlueJeans web UIs are great.
- webo 7y agoIsn’t BlueJeans just a wrapper around zoom?
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agohave you ever considered the security and privacy implications of using this product?
- raybb 7y agoWould be great to add tampermonkey/greasemonkey support. Opened a ticket for it
- arkadiyt 7y agoThe current implementation uses the WebExtension apis to perform an _internal_ redirect. When you navigate to a Zoom meeting, before the browser opens a connection or sends a single network packet, the extension rewrites the url to navigate to their web client. On the other hand tampermonkey/greasemonkey are content scripts that get injected into loaded pages. An implementation here would look like: the user navigates to a Zoom meeting, they load the entire page, and then a script gets injected to perform a `window.location` redirect. This will be slower and depending on the timing of events you may even still get the Zoom file download prompt. So I don't think tampermonkey/greasemonkey is a good fit here.
- sjnair96 7y agoTampermonkey, I believe, can also intercept HTTP requests. Maybe that's sufficient/necessary for redirecting to another client.
- capableweb 7y agoI can't find any information around this except an open issue (https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/397 https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/397), you got any links? As I understand issue linked above, they want to support it but currently does not, in official releases. What's supported is catching all requests in a page, but that's after the contentscript has been applied to the page, which means what arkadiyt wrote would still be accurate.
- igetspam 7y agoI had no idea there was even a web version. Does it work in Linux? Zoom often leaves me with broken audio and I really dislike having to have more rarely used software trying to stick around in memory. I uninstall it after each use, purely out of spite. This is great.
- Old_Thrashbarg 7y agoThe web client has never for me on Ubuntu.
- runarberg 7y agoOn Ubuntu + Firefox I can see other people, but I can’t hear anything, nor can they hear me (I don’t know if they can see me)
- arprocter 7y agoI believe they recommend Chrome, so you might want to give that a try
- tjpnz 7y agoIt's like we're back in the 90s again.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 7y agoExcept now the webapp is real time video and voice chat
- komeijist 7y agoThe joke was (at least to the best of my knowledge) that nudging people to use chrome is further reinstating their monopoly, leading to a browser landscape comparable to IE days, which would not quite be the 90s, but close.
- RMPR 7y ago
- therealmarv 7y agoI'm guessing this is related to the "Zoom monitors activity on your computer" story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22657384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22657384
- arkadiyt 7y agoIt's something I've wanted to write for a long time, and that tweet finally spurred me to do it. Hadn't seen the HN thread though!
- vasili111 7y agoSo web-based Zoom cannot detect if Zoom window is not active?
- arkadiyt 7y agoIt can still do that, but it can't get what programs you have running or the other data collected by the desktop client. Beyond the privacy concerns it's a security risk. Their desktop client had a remote code execution vulnerability last year: https://www.zdnet.com/article/researcher-says-zoom-web-server-is-vulnerable-to-remote-code-execution/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/researcher-says-zoom-web-serve...
- yoaviram 7y agoYou should update the readme to include this context!
- syrgian 7y agoThanks a lot! I had been bypassing manually the zoom client, but lately I felt like they were hiding more and more the browser option (up to the point that sometimes I had to run Chrome to have two chances for the non-client link to appear).
- dfee 7y agoI was unaware of that. Just frustrated it added an annoying “zoom” icon to my touch bar without my permission. I feel like this is “IE4 Toolbar” level crap.
- michaelrkn 7y agoI once used Zoom's web interface and the video quality was horrible. When I switched to the downloaded app, it was much better. Not sure if this was a one-off problem or an underinvestment in their web interface.
- RoboCheeks 7y agoWhile anecdotal, I pretty much exclusively use the web version and haven’t noticed degraded video quality when on a good internet connection. (I work on a 2015 MacBook Pro.)
- dbrgn 7y agoThe web version will be using WebRTC with whatever codecs your browser ships while the native version is able to use custom codecs.
- padenot 7y agoThis is incorrect. Zoom doesn't use webrtc audio and video channels, only data channels, and has reimplemeted audio and video channels on top of that, doing the decoding in js and probably wasm. They also limit the resolution to 480p for the web app, probably because of performances. Browsers and zoom both use h264, but browsers usually use vp8 instead. There is no reason webrtc cannot offer the same quality (or better) than zoom, at the same bit rate, but it all comes down to the actual implementation of browsers and web apps. webrtc-based apps work well, these days.
- dbrgn 7y agoThanks for the information, I also realized that a while after writing the comment. No wonder the experience is worse than in their native client, data channels are still terribly unoptimized (sometimes even broken in some aspects). Edit: https://bloggeek.me/when-will-zoom-use-webrtc/ https://bloggeek.me/when-will-zoom-use-webrtc/
- mooreds 7y agoWhen I saw the title I thought it was something else. At a previous company we had a nice url: mooreds.example.com which would redirect to a standing zoom url. Made for a nice way to easily start a video conversation.
- jbverschoor 7y agoNever zoom for me ever again with their malware. I refuse to use or install their product.
- SCdF 7y agoThat is great for you. For a lot of people it's becoming a requirement of their jobs, and quitting in a global pandemic over an app seems like a non-optimal response.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agothis attitude is actually a major part of the problem - if engineers would consistently speak up instead about this not meeting security / privacy standards maybe we could have nice things. unfortunately people either really are this incompetent and don't know or lack the balls to do so. Either way we all lose out. zoom seriously needs to die. no friggin way I'd ever engage in a responsible disclosure with this company - no matter who gets thrown under the bus.
- SCdF 7y agoNo one is saying don't speak up. You're commenting on a post that is about a link that helps people use a web version of Zoom, which by its definition doesn't have the malware issues that people talk about (unless they are breaking sandboxing in the browser which would be pretty major). What I was replying to was the "no grey area allowed" black and white dying on a hill response to the existence of the tool at all. This is why non technical people roll their eyes at technical folks and ignore us, because so many of us live in this world where we aren't willing to negotiate or hold more than a single thought in our heads at once. I don't want to use Zoom, I bring up alternatives at my org all the time, and meetings that I control do not use it, and I do not install their binaries on my own devices, instead opting to use the web client when required. But the reality is that I don't get to make that call all the time, and if it's a choice between using Zoom on the web and not communicating at all, then the choice seems pretty clear to me.
- tristandunn 7y agoThis inspired me to finally figure out how to be able to one-click Zoom links, with no external protocol prompt or leftover useless tab in Chrome. https://github.com/tristandunn/one-click-zoom https://github.com/tristandunn/one-click-zoom
- rbirkby 7y agohttps://medium.com/zoom-developer-blog/zoom-url-schemes-748b95fd9205 https://medium.com/zoom-developer-blog/zoom-url-schemes-748b...
- tristandunn 7y agoThe official Zoom Scheduler extension automatically adds https:// https:// links to Google Calendar. I suppose I could hijack the URL earlier, but you'd still need the external protocol prompt setting. And I guess depending on how it's handled it could potentially avoid the need to close the tab, although it might require permissions for every website instead. I think I'll stick with my simple solution for now.
- AlexCoventry 7y agoOh, cool. I really need this. Thanks.
- christopoulos 7y agoSolving Zoom’s Dark Pattern no 1... great work!
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agoI don't want to diss an effort made with good intentions. though this is like using duct tape on fatally flawed design - it doesn't solve the problem. We're dealing with an inherently hostile company which aggressively uses dark pattern, ignoring privacy and security best practices. Not only are they ignoring these things they actively bypass the security control on the host-system where it is installed - this is literally what malware does. You don't put duct tape on malware so it works better for you! If they would be a Chinese company they'd be banned and probably even sanctioned. Stop using this shit and stop justifying its use just because your employer makes you use it. Grow some balls (or eggs) and speak up naming it for what this is (malware) - so that we can all have nice things and not be forced to engage in endlessly justifying ourselves because "team or company XYZ is using it too and it works great for them ..."
- skrebbel 7y agoI have absolutely no idea what you're on about. How is Zoom malware? By "actively bypass the security" do you mean "it's a program that you need to install on your computer"? Can you elaborate why Zoom is malware in ways that VS Code, VLC Media Player or Photoshop aren't? EDIT: I mean the question honestly, as a question. I might have missed something. I mean, I saw yesterday's HN topic on a tweet that claims it sends info about all active programs to a server. But I saw nothing to substantiate that other than an "attention tracking" feature which is way less invasive than what's described in that tweet and off by default. Did I miss the evidence, or some other damning privacy invading misfeature?
- rainforest 7y agoThe videoconferencing industry seems to believe it's necessary to bypass regular OS protections to make the UX "better". For example: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/8/20687014/zoom-security-flaw-video-conference-websites-hijack-mac-cameras https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/8/20687014/zoom-security-fla... By design, instead of using a URL handler, they run a HTTP server on your machine to bypass the "open with" dialog. There are good reasons not to trust the binaries they ask you to run. Here, it turns out they offer a web client after all, which is nice and sandboxed, but they default to trying to run a binary on your machine where you have less control over what it does.
- aequitas 7y agoDoesn't zoom also support h.323 and SIP[0]? There are open client available for this [1]. Don't know how good these actually work. [0] https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200110033-H-323-SIP https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200110033-H-323-... [1] https://www.gnugk.org/h323-endpoint.html https://www.gnugk.org/h323-endpoint.html
- jwr 7y agoI highly recommend using solutions based on WebRTC, which is present in all modern browsers and is really good (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFil-ZPE0-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFil-ZPE0-g for a comparison with Zoom). Whereby (formerly appear.in) https://whereby.com/ https://whereby.com/ has a really nice and simple system. No more jumping through a dozen hoops, no more installing software with glaring security holes and borderline malware behavior (looking at you, Zoom).
- Quanttek 7y agoHow does WebRTC compare when you have a lot of callers (e.g. 20 people in a call)? From my understanding, it is p2p, so the network throughput required would be a lot higher, correct?
- jwr 7y agoTBH, I have no idea, I have done calls with up to 8 people only. I would be interested to know myself. Whereby seems to support up to 12 video streams, with the rest being audio-only.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agowe've been using jit.si in 2016 which worked well but it might be overloaded today idk. we hit some bottlenecks when trying to scale up and improved the situation by running our own jitsi instance on a DO droplet but that too would not scale to a large audience. I think that if you have more than 10 participants in the meeting then you have anyway other problems (the same issues when you have too many people in a f2f meeting). from a technical pov I still wonder if running jitsi (or another similar solution) on dedicated hardware which is better tailored to a GPU intensive operation. This could then be easily deployed in-house (with all the benefits: full control and eliminating a lot of attack vectors). Seems like a cool problem to solve while in corona quarantine.
- chupasaurus 7y agoIIRC Skype back when it was p2p used the first participant as a host with full resync if it went down.
- psim1 7y agoI can’t seem to figure it out: what is the URL pattern that leads to a web meeting rather than an app launch? I don’t want a widget. I just want to type it in myself.
- zamadatix 7y agoLooks like prefix the id in the ptah with /wc/ and postfix it with /join though if I look at a real Zoom invite with both links it's prefix with /wc/join e.g. https://example.zoom.us/j/<numbers> https://example.zoom.us/j/<numbers> is https://example.zoom.us/wc/join/<numbers> https://example.zoom.us/wc/join/<numbers> for the web link.
- psim1 7y agoThat works! The "join" can go before or after the numeric ID. I just tried it both ways.
- AgloeDreams 7y agoI really want to try this out for the specific reason of testing to see cpu performance differences. The MacOS app is a massive CPU abuser with ~50-60% use in meeting or sharing on my iMac 4k, it makes demoing work much slower than reality and makes my work look slower than it even is IRL.
- alimoeeny 7y agoI wish there was a solution for Cisco WebEx. To join in a browser and avoid their application. On macos it automatically adds itself to the launchagents (or whatever that autolaunch on login is), it is not the easiest thing to get rid of (regular users might be stuck with it forever.
- gumby 7y agoWill the drive to mass online meetings finally revive multicast?
- lostmsu 7y agoMade a WebView wrapper for Windows, that has an additional benefit of having a separate browser profile (e.g. no crosstracking): https://losttech.software/Downloads/FuZoom/ https://losttech.software/Downloads/FuZoom/