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It's pretty annoying if you're a Firefox-primary user to have to manually copy Calendar/Slack links and start up Chrome to paste them in. It is also pretty ann

It's pretty annoying if you're a Firefox-primary user to have to manually copy Calendar/Slack links and start up Chrome to paste them in. It is also pretty annoying and sad to see the Web heading back to the siloed features and browser incompatibilities/lock-in of the 90s.

TechBro8615 4y ago
Couldn't I just as well make the argument it's pretty annoying that Firefox doesn't implement the API features required for background blurring? Blurring background during live video calls is a pretty niche feature, and if it works in one browser but not another, I'm not sure that is the best evidence of siloing. I'd like to have the option to use the feature where it works, rather than having it disabled everywhere.
- error503 4y ago
  > Couldn't I just as well make the argument it's pretty annoying that Firefox doesn't implement the API features required for background blurring? Maybe, if that were the case, though even the opacity of the messaging is also a problem. Not 'your browser doesn't support the XYZ API, which is required for this feature, try Chrome', or even 'your browser is unsupported, but if you want to try anyway, click here', but 'use a supported browser for this or fuck off <links to Chrome>'. From what I've looked into on this in particular though, Google sends different code to Firefox, and does pretty aggressive browser detection to do so (spoofing UA is not sufficient to get the Chrome code), but if you can get it to run the Chrome code, it actually works fine. There may be some performance issues on Firefox that the Meet team doesn't like, but rather than doing an overrideable runtime performance check or exposing anything at all to the user, they just ban Firefox users from the feature. This is, if you ask me, totally against the principle of the web, which is meant to be based on open standards and running the same code everywhere, not deciding if you like the browser the user is using and giving them a degraded view. We've seen where this leads before when we have a dominant browser vendor that wants to entrench that position, and now that vendor operates important web services too, which they can leverage to further cement that dominance. I don't think it is a good place to be.
- ornornor 4y ago
  > Blurring background during live video calls is a pretty niche feature Is it? Since the pandemic happened, working from home is rather mainstream along with video meetings. I wouldn’t call it niche when office space occupancy is down 50%.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    Sure. Why does Firefox make it hard to implement this feature then? And by the way, I agree with you/OP and feel similarly about siloed web features. But we're having a discussion here. It's unfortunate not everyone on HN remembers that downvotes are not for disagreement.
    - ornornor 4y ago
      Google says Firefox is making it hard which is also a very convenient way to force users to use chrome (and log into their google account to enable the feature because… why?) Other video conferencing software like jitsi meet doesn’t seem to think it’s too hard for them to implement as blurring works perfectly well there without chrome or logging into google.

TechBro8615 4y ago

Couldn't I just as well make the argument it's pretty annoying that Firefox doesn't implement the API features required for background blurring? Blurring background during live video calls is a pretty niche feature, and if it works in one browser but not another, I'm not sure that is the best evidence of siloing. I'd like to have the option to use the feature where it works, rather than having it disabled everywhere.

error503 4y ago
> Couldn't I just as well make the argument it's pretty annoying that Firefox doesn't implement the API features required for background blurring? Maybe, if that were the case, though even the opacity of the messaging is also a problem. Not 'your browser doesn't support the XYZ API, which is required for this feature, try Chrome', or even 'your browser is unsupported, but if you want to try anyway, click here', but 'use a supported browser for this or fuck off <links to Chrome>'. From what I've looked into on this in particular though, Google sends different code to Firefox, and does pretty aggressive browser detection to do so (spoofing UA is not sufficient to get the Chrome code), but if you can get it to run the Chrome code, it actually works fine. There may be some performance issues on Firefox that the Meet team doesn't like, but rather than doing an overrideable runtime performance check or exposing anything at all to the user, they just ban Firefox users from the feature. This is, if you ask me, totally against the principle of the web, which is meant to be based on open standards and running the same code everywhere, not deciding if you like the browser the user is using and giving them a degraded view. We've seen where this leads before when we have a dominant browser vendor that wants to entrench that position, and now that vendor operates important web services too, which they can leverage to further cement that dominance. I don't think it is a good place to be.
ornornor 4y ago
> Blurring background during live video calls is a pretty niche feature Is it? Since the pandemic happened, working from home is rather mainstream along with video meetings. I wouldn’t call it niche when office space occupancy is down 50%.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  Sure. Why does Firefox make it hard to implement this feature then? And by the way, I agree with you/OP and feel similarly about siloed web features. But we're having a discussion here. It's unfortunate not everyone on HN remembers that downvotes are not for disagreement.
  - ornornor 4y ago
    Google says Firefox is making it hard which is also a very convenient way to force users to use chrome (and log into their google account to enable the feature because… why?) Other video conferencing software like jitsi meet doesn’t seem to think it’s too hard for them to implement as blurring works perfectly well there without chrome or logging into google.