13 ms·

Firefox Hello

713 points by ajankovic 12y ago

caractacus 12y ago
Just what does the 'powered by Telefonica' bit mean?
- aroch 12y ago
  https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/10/16/mozilla-and-telefonica-partner-to-simplify-voice-and-video-calls-on-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/10/16/mozilla-and-telefon... Presumably offering routing servers and transit. Plus Telefonica bought TokBox[1], whose tech powers the backend [1] https://tokbox.com/ https://tokbox.com/
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    Does this affect the end to end encryption mechanism of WebRTC (at least for Internet users)? In other words, can Telefonica make it easy to spy on all Firefox Hello talks, or only on the browser-to-phone ones? (which is to be expected, I guess).
    - aroch 12y ago
      From my understanding of the WebRTC spec, as long as your TURN/STUN server is trusted (which it is, the CA and relay are both run by Mozilla) it doesn't matter if the network is untrustworthy. WebRTC by itsself is not MITM resistant
- alvatar 12y ago
  Telefonica has many developers working on Firefox OS, it probably means that the want to show up.
- netfire 12y ago
  Telefonica is a global telecommunications company. (I've never seen them in the US, but they are very common in latin america) Not sure what they have to do with a web video chat system.
- suyash 12y ago
  Now that is scary, as I don't want to give all my personal data to some random company's server in Europe? Firefox is cool with me but Telefonica, not so much.
  - nsm 12y ago
    Your personal data isn't going anywhere. The server is only used for establishing the connection when clients are behind NATs (which in today's environment you usually always are). If I understand WebRTC correctly, once the link is established, all communication is peer to peer.
    - dkharrat 12y ago
      > If I understand WebRTC correctly, once the link is established, all communication is peer to peer. In general, it's peer-to-peer, but for clients that can't communicate peer-to-peer for whatever reason (usually due to certain NATs), a relay server is used as an intermediary. To the user it's transparent, so they can't easily tell if it's peer-to-peer or not.
mp3geek 12y ago
Does it include IM rather than just video/audio chat?
- nothrabannosir 12y ago
  no, unfortunately :(
  - suyash 12y ago
    Use node based chat application for that.
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    well that's a real bummer. I was hoping for a decent Skype replacement.
BSousa 12y ago
I saw the tag line, liked what I saw until "powered by Telefonica". Seriously, I've lived in more than half of the European countries for a while, and never ever EVER saw such a shitty internet service as in Spain over their network. Lack of service for hours every day, substandard speeds... It made me anticipate a move to Portugal by one year because of their shitty service.
- jfoster 12y ago
  I don't view Telefonica being good/bad at running a mobile network as too relevant to this offering. It's a different product running on very different infrastructure. I do think their involvement is a good reason to be cautious, though. Why are Mozilla not running it themselves, and what does Telefonica intend to get out of the service? (large telcos generally don't run free services out of the goodness of their heart)
- mahouse 12y ago
  That was probably years ago, because by now, they are the ones that serve more homes with FTTH technology.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
    True, they're technically ahead with the FTTH. But if you have their DSL and don't want them to do works in your house to install their FTTH cables and devices which aren't compatible with any other provider, so that if you are unhappy you have to do works again to change ISP, then you're stuck with at most 1 GB of data per month on mobile. FTTH customers have 2 GB but they won't give DSL customers the 2 GB, not even the option to pay for it, because you know, it's obvious that I need to install FTTH in my home if I want my mobile phone to be able to handle such a bandwidth! This tends to be their policy most of the time: if you don't buy their latest and greatest they screw you by not giving you any updates until they convince you to do so (with a long-term contract of course). Oh, and unacknowledge but obvious caps on various direct download websites, P2P, etc. which I guess would go away if I bought their latest and greatest too. I'm currently with them because my preferred cable provider (R) didn't have coverage in my building a year ago, but now they do have coverage, so I'm probably saying bye-bye to Telefonica soon. Yes, the service is now technically good, even probably the best (FTTH), but who cares if all their policies (the above is just an example but there are lots more) are set to nickel-and-dime the customers, and to sell more and more and more. You can't even do a technical service call without them spamming you and trying to sell you stuff. R doesn't have FTTH but has a much, much better customer service (including automatic improvements in the bandwidth for time to time, without even asking).
monsterix 12y ago
Super! Looks great works great too! Lately I'd been bothered by poor quality experience and sometimes even spam requests on Skype. Hangouts was never my thing and Firefox Hello seems like a breath of fresh air just at the right time. Keep it up!
- suyash 12y ago
  another problem with tools like Skype and Google Hangout is the number of concurrent participants.
  - jrochkind1 12y ago
    How many does Firefox Hello support? I can't figure out from the page if it supports more than 2 -- which makes me think it's probably 2.
fiatpandas 12y ago
It's interesting, although struck me as weird to bundle/market it as part of the core Firefox experience, especially considering its closely tied to a third party. Seems more extension territory.
- azakai 12y ago
  You can see it as a pre-bundled extension, I suppose. I think the point of pre-bundling it is to get more attention and in that way to promote WebRTC, which is a good goal. Size-wise, I didn't look at the code but this is likely a tiny extension, it's just a little UI over WebRTC.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    >the point of pre-bundling it is to get more attention and in that way to promote WebRTC // Presumably though instead of FF dev team making a Moz sponsored extension Telefonica came to them and said "we'll give you this barrel of cash if we can put our name on a new part of FF that gets default installed". Indeed Moz could have just had Telefonica named as devs on an extension and shipped it as default - which would seem more natural. The way it is makes it more like a marketing move to hijack FF as a place to put an advert. Appear.in seems to work fine and without messing with my browser chrome.
    - tedmielczarek 12y ago
      I would be extremely surprised to find out that was how it happened. More likely we (Mozilla) just have contacts at Telefonica from our Firefox OS work, and Telefonica happens to have this opentok software which provides a useful piece of making Firefox Hello work, so co-branding was a win/win.
      - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
        Going with that line, was the inclusion of Hello such a complex thing that it needed to be bought in from outside of Mozilla - I'd assumed that using WebRTC as a video chat component made things [relatively] quite facile which is why there are so many implementations popping up. What's the essential feature that Telefonica brings to the table that makes it worth Mozilla compromising their brand across 500 million installs [using Wikipedia figures there] - that's essentially saying that what Telefonica bought to the table is worth, what, > $5 million [assuming 10¢ per install for the brand placement]. Can you expand on the "win/win" part on the Mozilla, and their supporters, side?
cjensen 12y ago
A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. In my view, this is true for most values of X, including Skype, Mail, Word, Excel... To add insult to injury, there is no simple way of disabling the functionality[1]. Firefox Hello is ludicrous. [1] about:config is not a valid value of simple
- baddox 12y ago
  > A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. I'll agree if you amend "allow a web page to implement X" to "allow a web page or an extension to implement X."
- mccr8 12y ago
  The underlying technology used to implement this is WebRTC, which is available to web pages. Implementing peer-to-peer real time video communication entirely in Javascript would be difficult, so it has to be provided to some extent by the browser itself.
  - nothrabannosir 12y ago
    But, if this is peer-to-peer, what's Telefonica's role?
    - mccr8 12y ago
      I don't know about Telefonica's role, but in general WebRTC needs external servers to deal with things like NATs and firewalls: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure...
      - soapdog 12y ago
        I think telefonica is running the looper service that helps the peers connect to each other... but I am not sure.
    - 12y ago
AdmiralAsshat 12y ago
Do they have the specs anywhere on their encryption?
- stegosaurus 12y ago
  I am also very interested in this. A secure and easy to use solution for web chat is really needed. If it's easy to use but insecure, that simply raises the bar for competing secure solutions to meet, which is a shame.
- mbrubeck 12y ago
  Here's a good summary: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/82/slides/rtcweb-13.pdf http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/82/slides/rtcweb-13.pdf The peer-to-peer WebRTC connection uses DTLS+SRTP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Secur... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Pro...
  - deleted 12y ago
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- fulafel 12y ago
  Apparently not. The fact that they use WebRTC gives you some properties of the system (assuming you are familiar with per browser implementation details of WebRTC, not just the standard) but not enough to tell what kind of security properties the application provides.
dionyziz 12y ago
Why is this even a thing?
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- nolok 12y ago
  > I somehow hoped Mozilla would never employ these kind of business models where is user is the product. Then you must be naive, given that this has been Mozilla's main source of income for years.
  - jfoster 12y ago
    That's true. Their business model is essentially selling users to search engines. That said, they have always done it quite softly by selling users to the search engine that most of them want to use anyway, and making it very easy for users to opt-out of that arrangement.
    - _nedR 12y ago
      > they have always done it quite softly... That would be because they're a non-profit working for the benefit of said users.
- pmontra 12y ago
  Me too. I immediately removed the Hello icon when I read Telefonica. Apparently it's because of Tokbox but I won't trust one more telco then I have to.
  - nsm 12y ago
    WebRTC is encrypted end to end. afaik Telefonica is only providing a STUN/TURN server so NATed clients can discover each other. You don't have to worry about Telefonica or anyone else eavesdropping.
suyash 12y ago
Now the question is can you enable 'Screen sharing' utility to it? It could then be a killer app for meetings and conferences getting rid of all the expensive external software applications? When I say screen share, I mean not just the browser's screen but the whole computer screen?
- DanWaterworth 12y ago
  Have you tried using hangouts?
- jcheng 12y ago
  appear.in offers this, and in my experience has better video quality than Google Hangouts.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I am not sure giving the browser permission to poll your entire screen via an API is a good idea - think of the possible abuses.
teabee89 12y ago
I was using vline.com (also using WebRTC) works like a charm.
ffn 12y ago
As an example of WebRTC this is pretty decent... but please work on getting navigator.getUserMedia to screen-capture into a stream more easily; right now, the browsers' screen-capturing apis are extremely wonky and difficult to build applications with.
Shivetya 12y ago
and here I remember the day this all started because browsers had become bloated.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Firefox was always about switching to a user oriented focus. Getting rid of bloat happened to be a necessary early step on that path.
- deleted 12y ago
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- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I used it when it was named Firebird, and it was buggy. I remember being amazed when Google released Chrome, and Safari was available as a buggy mess on Windows. I still miss Mozilla Composer and Microsoft Frontpage for writing abysmal HTML with <strong> everywhere.
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sehr 12y ago
Built with React.js as well! http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/loop/content/js/ http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compon...
- jbeja 12y ago
  Omg, I love react, but you fanboyism is just to far.
mgkimsal 12y ago
Guess I'm the odd duck out... Crashes every time I try it - 35.0.1 on Mavericks 10.9.4 :(
- nsm 12y ago
  Please file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org, or you can email me the details (email in profile) and I'll file it for you.
  - mgkimsal 12y ago
    filed (had to get home first) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127178 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127178 Not sure this is necessarily enough info to go on, but it's reproducible on my end for sure - it wasn't a one-off. thanks.
nothrabannosir 12y ago
I hate being "that guy", but what about sites like https://appear.in/ https://appear.in/ that do this without (seemingly?) depending on browser support? Is this using some novel p2p technique that can't be implemented using just JS? When you send a FF Hello invite to a Chrome user, it works fine. I.o.w.: why is this not just a website?
- UberMouse 12y ago
  Both Firefox Hello and appear.in use WebRTC which is a Javascript API provided by the browser for this sort of stuff. So appear.in does require browser support. Firefox Hello also is a website, it's just running inside the browser. http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/loop/content/ http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compon...
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  i mean it says: > Hello is super easy to use and your friends and family don’t even need Firefox to join your conversation. As long as they have a compatible browser, they’re good to go. as far as i've read this is basically appear.in but with some native buttons in firefox, and optional firefox account integration.
- deleted 12y ago
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- jbeja 12y ago
  Hello doesn't depend on Firefox, Mozilla have bigger name and better marketing techniques.
tobico 12y ago
Mozilla are clearly becoming desperate to find any distinguishing factors to market Firefox. Sadly, this feels like the beginning of the end for this browser.
- olefoo 12y ago
  Let's see where this stands three years from now. Mozilla is working on some pretty neat stuff; and is paying attention to the rest of the world, not just the American/European/Japanese market. Also since they are a foundation owned corporation with a public benefit mission https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ they can take a longer-term view than some of the other big players. Having played with one of the flame dev phones for FirefoxOS I wouldn't be too surprised if within the decade they are dominant in areas of the world that don't have an installed base ( rural india, sub-saharan africa outside of SA, etc. ). Remember that more people are going to acquire mobile internet devices in the next 5 years than were on the internet in 1998.
  - drdaeman 12y ago
    The underlying problem and a source of debate is this "public benefit" part, as perceived by some engineers vs others. The problem is simple to describe, but nearly impossible to solve. On the one hand, ask anyone whenever they want to have video conferencing without having to download additional software and based on open standards blah blah — and you're likely to hear "yeah, that's cool, where do I get it?" before you finish the questions. Because, without going in much detail this all sounds awfully good. On the other hand, a few engineers have issues with this. Questions like "why this is bundled in giant monolithic browser blob" are perfectly valid. Especially those who value classic UNIXes' approach to do things, may be well dissatisfied with this kind of stuff being done in the name "public benefit", considering this as yet another case of "dancing bunnies" problem, with masses being ignorant of the issues.
    - mkal_tsr 12y ago
      I agree. I'm very against the style of discussion about these topics, it's very "you agree with this feature 100% or any criticism is seen as an attack" rather than an attempt to debate the merits of features / implementations.
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windlep 12y ago
Since no one realizes that Mozilla actually develops stuff in the open (vs. code/project-dumps like Google after its 'done'), here's the Mozilla project page for Hello (previously called Loop): https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop A bunch of the hypothetical questions here on HN could be answered easily by skimming over this page and some of the pages linked in. Edit: I'm not suggesting its bad or good to get a project to a more polished state before open-sourcing it, mainly just pointing out that for good/bad, Mozilla does happen to keep the entirety of the process very open.
- pekk 12y ago
  I don't have any problem with people making open source projects and then publishing them once they are finished. It's still open source.
  - siddboots 12y ago
    It is open source, but there are different models of project development. In particular, there is a lot of nuance in your term "once they are finished". If a company periodically dumps a large project tree online but continues the development and management behind closed doors, it makes it very difficult anyone else to make use of or build upon the source without forking it completely (and forking has its own risks). This is why windlep is pointing out that Mozilla "develops in the open", as opposed to being merely open source.
    - click170 12y ago
      Nitpick: I don't think there's anything wrong with a closed development model and open sourcing the result, but IMO it's not open source until the code is available. If you're starting a project with this intention, I don't think it's really Open Source until your first code dump is publicly accessible - at which point, go nuts with branding it Open Source. I also don't think it's unfair to do code dumps, if the code is available then job done. Other projects provide additional hand holding, but in my opinion that's a feature that the original authors have the freedom to choose to not implement. I'm really pleased that Mozilla have chosen an open development model.
mkal_tsr 12y ago
I've updated my user.js helper/repo to disable Hello/"codename Loop" - https://github.com/m-kal/PrivatePanda https://github.com/m-kal/PrivatePanda ----- Dear Mozilla, Firefox is a browser. Can you please stop with the feature creep? That'd be lovely. Remember, you're a browser, not an operating system. Oh, you'd like to be an operating system? Cool, then make an OS (o hai there Firefox OS) and keep that functionality there. Stop adding extra features that are not needed to browse the internet. It seems only Lynx cares about an authentic node-to-node / client-to-server relationship without all the privacy concerns :-(
- toolz 12y ago
  You realize this is just a fancy bookmark, right? Lynx has bookmarks, too.
  - mkal_tsr 12y ago
    Can Lynx activate this feature at all? Lynx may have bookmarks, but as far as I can tell, Lynx does not have WebRTC support, which means it can not be exploited to share private LAN IP addresses, nor can it access web cams. Firefox, like Chrome, is going overboard with non-web-browsing features. Some less technical users surely will appreciate that, but at some point it becomes less of a browser and more of a pseudo-OS. If people don't voice their opinion against this direction, then Mozilla will continue down this path. I don't think it's too much to ask a web browser to be a web browser and nothing more.
    - toolz 12y ago
      Then your argument is against webRTC, not Hello.
      - mkal_tsr 12y ago
        I am also against webRTC, I don't think it's mutually exclusive. Mozilla is signalling with this that they're looking to push applications that leverage their feature-set.
tn13 12y ago
I am happy to see Firefox adding any sort of functionality as long as they dont break the web standards. For example it would be bad if Firefox Hello comes as "hello.firefox.com" but does not work in Chrome. But if it comes as a Firefox only extension I am fine with it.
- nsm 12y ago
  It uses webrtc. The link you share will work on any browser that has webrtc. The icon is only to make things easier if you use firefox.
Sir_Substance 12y ago
It seems there is a lot of confusion going on here. Firefox hello is a website that implements webRTC based video conferencing in a browser agnostic way. The "firefox hello" button that has shown up in recent versions of the browser is a bit of UI magic over an API to this website. The video conferencing code is not implemented in the browser. If you send a firefox hello link to a chrome user, it opens the webpage when they click on it instead of the UI element. I actually think it's really neat, and have replaced skype with it since it works so widely and doesn't require everyone to have an account to use it.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  This is a like a case study in how to [not] handle messaging towards technical users. There's no issue here, but it just appears like Firefox is now shipping apps or something, rather than essentially a bookmark.
  - knodi123 12y ago
    that's certainly what I came to complain about, until I read the comment you replied to.
  - jonchang 12y ago
    What led you to believe that the linked page was targeted towards technical users?
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Not saying it was. Just that FF has a lot of sensitive, technical, users, so Mozilla has to deal with this insanity it looks like. Thus, they might consider having a "how it works" or "why" section to calm such users.
      - longlivegnu 12y ago
        Can't they just look at the source code?
samvj 12y ago
Since they're doing it at the browser level, it would have been nice if they provided screen sharing instead of this. Google Hangouts-like screen sharing without the need for an account would be awesome.
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- deleted 12y ago
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dorfsmay 12y ago
Is the connection peer to peer once established? Btw, I tried hello a couple of weeks ago and it felt like voice/video over the net 5 or 6 years ago, no proper echo cancelation, similar to the old video plugin in pidgin. Also, there is no text IM.
- dkharrat 12y ago
  It's based on the WebRTC standard, so in general, yes it's peer-to-peer. However, in cases where the peer-to-peer connection cannot be established (e.g. a user behind symmetric NAT), then a third-party relay server is used (called a TURN server) which acts as the intermediary between the peers (sort of like a proxy).
shmerl 12y ago
When is anyone going to make a pure WebRTC service for calling phone lines that would work in the browser? All existing ones require some native code plugins. Not sure why no one made such service yet.
- hox 12y ago
  Twilio Client (https://www.twilio.com/webrtc https://www.twilio.com/webrtc) does this through just JavaScript and webrtc, using Twilio as the bridge. granted you need to wire up to the JavaScript, but it's fairly simple.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Do they have a WebRTC based service for users (not for developers) similar to Google Talk / Hagnouts phone calling which doesn't necessarily create a dedicated phone number for you, but allows calling other phones? I'm not interested in building my own service using their API, I want simply to use one like that without a need to debug weird issues in native plugins.
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songco 12y ago
Oh, when Mozilla add "Share Screen" feature to hello?
- visarga 12y ago
  Use VNC, it's better anyway. I run vnc over a ssh tunnel to make it safer.
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    So, what's your workflow when you need to see someone's screen? Please note: You might talk to this someone for the first time and (s)he might not be an IT person.
- anoopelias 12y ago
  When will they add a public API - so that you can develop share screen or P2P games or whatever..
- nsm 12y ago
  Seems like it is being worked on - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1126289 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1126289
minusSeven 12y ago
All the negativity aside, anyone knows how this works ?
e0m 12y ago
Can this support multiple conversations at once? Group chat Sqwiggle / Hangout style?
- tckr 12y ago
  That's definitely a requirement for me to switch from Hangouts …
- aragot 12y ago
  It doesn't seem so. I've tried with 3 windows (FF Dev, FF and Chrome) and it says "There are already two people in this conversation."
yxhuvud 12y ago
So I imported some contacts. How the hell do I remove some of them? Why wasn't I given a choice of which contacts to import?
nikolak 12y ago
>There’s no account or sign-in required and nothing extra to download. Just start a conversation, send your friend a link and ask them to click it. I don't think this is such a great idea, at least in my case, if I'm sending someone link for them to open instantly then I'm probably already using a platform that supports video conversations - for example Skype, which also has IM and some other stuff that FF Hello doesn't.
- kleiba 12y ago
  Different people's workflows differ, of course. I can totally imagine this for the video conferences we have with external partners in our group. These are usually scheduled ahead of time, so we could just arrange that people check their inbox for the link. Email is what most people use in these projects, while IM'ing is very exotic and practically not used.
aragot 12y ago
There's already an FAQ entry [1] on "Where is the Firefox Hello button?", and the answer is not an intuitive one. It would have been OK to display the button by default. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-button https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-but...
skyshine 12y ago
Does anyone know if they are planning on including an IM client with it. (I know it doesn't have one yet). Without that it is pretty useless to me.
blueskin_ 12y ago
Oh great, more bloat and potential vulns. Anyone got a way to disable it yet?
jason46 12y ago
So this link is useful for new users. I had no idea how to open it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-button https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-but... Next issue, I'm using a docked laptop and it defaulted to the cam in the folded laptop instead of the cam pointed at me..
- jason46 12y ago
  Anybody see a way to change the camera?
mikelbring 12y ago
Is it available for Chrome?
dyeje 12y ago
The logo reminds me of HipChat.
Eleutheria 12y ago
Sending a link is stupid. I want my browser to ring when there is an incoming call. Firefox should have an open socket connection to Mozilla servers and deliver services thru that, just like android cloud messaging, like alerts, notifications, push apis, etc.
- hardwaresofton 12y ago
  Mozilla != Google Funding such services is a big decision for them -- they're the ones that have to support it, keep it up, and pay for it (for the life of the service). As they make money in a distinctly different way from Google, they don't have the same positive feedback loop -- Google is happy to provide you free web services because you are the product.
- windlep 12y ago
  Firefox Hello does have an open socket connection to Mozilla servers. This is why once you give out the link, Hello can ring the browser to indicate someone has joined the conversation. Since Hello currently doesn't have a Friends list or a way to utilize existing social networks, passing a link to a friend is how you give them permission to ring your browser.
anon4 12y ago
I tried it. It works pretty well over the local lan, at least. What I really want to see is multi-user chats.

Firefox Hello

713 points by ajankovic 12y ago

caractacus 12y ago

Just what does the 'powered by Telefonica' bit mean?

aroch 12y ago
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/10/16/mozilla-and-telefonica-partner-to-simplify-voice-and-video-calls-on-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/10/16/mozilla-and-telefon... Presumably offering routing servers and transit. Plus Telefonica bought TokBox[1], whose tech powers the backend [1] https://tokbox.com/ https://tokbox.com/
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Does this affect the end to end encryption mechanism of WebRTC (at least for Internet users)? In other words, can Telefonica make it easy to spy on all Firefox Hello talks, or only on the browser-to-phone ones? (which is to be expected, I guess).
  - aroch 12y ago
    From my understanding of the WebRTC spec, as long as your TURN/STUN server is trusted (which it is, the CA and relay are both run by Mozilla) it doesn't matter if the network is untrustworthy. WebRTC by itsself is not MITM resistant
alvatar 12y ago
Telefonica has many developers working on Firefox OS, it probably means that the want to show up.
netfire 12y ago
Telefonica is a global telecommunications company. (I've never seen them in the US, but they are very common in latin america) Not sure what they have to do with a web video chat system.
suyash 12y ago
Now that is scary, as I don't want to give all my personal data to some random company's server in Europe? Firefox is cool with me but Telefonica, not so much.
- nsm 12y ago
  Your personal data isn't going anywhere. The server is only used for establishing the connection when clients are behind NATs (which in today's environment you usually always are). If I understand WebRTC correctly, once the link is established, all communication is peer to peer.
  - dkharrat 12y ago
    > If I understand WebRTC correctly, once the link is established, all communication is peer to peer. In general, it's peer-to-peer, but for clients that can't communicate peer-to-peer for whatever reason (usually due to certain NATs), a relay server is used as an intermediary. To the user it's transparent, so they can't easily tell if it's peer-to-peer or not.

mp3geek 12y ago

Does it include IM rather than just video/audio chat?

nothrabannosir 12y ago
no, unfortunately :(
- suyash 12y ago
  Use node based chat application for that.
- m_mueller 12y ago
  well that's a real bummer. I was hoping for a decent Skype replacement.

BSousa 12y ago

I saw the tag line, liked what I saw until "powered by Telefonica". Seriously, I've lived in more than half of the European countries for a while, and never ever EVER saw such a shitty internet service as in Spain over their network. Lack of service for hours every day, substandard speeds... It made me anticipate a move to Portugal by one year because of their shitty service.

jfoster 12y ago
I don't view Telefonica being good/bad at running a mobile network as too relevant to this offering. It's a different product running on very different infrastructure. I do think their involvement is a good reason to be cautious, though. Why are Mozilla not running it themselves, and what does Telefonica intend to get out of the service? (large telcos generally don't run free services out of the goodness of their heart)
mahouse 12y ago
That was probably years ago, because by now, they are the ones that serve more homes with FTTH technology.
- Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
  True, they're technically ahead with the FTTH. But if you have their DSL and don't want them to do works in your house to install their FTTH cables and devices which aren't compatible with any other provider, so that if you are unhappy you have to do works again to change ISP, then you're stuck with at most 1 GB of data per month on mobile. FTTH customers have 2 GB but they won't give DSL customers the 2 GB, not even the option to pay for it, because you know, it's obvious that I need to install FTTH in my home if I want my mobile phone to be able to handle such a bandwidth! This tends to be their policy most of the time: if you don't buy their latest and greatest they screw you by not giving you any updates until they convince you to do so (with a long-term contract of course). Oh, and unacknowledge but obvious caps on various direct download websites, P2P, etc. which I guess would go away if I bought their latest and greatest too. I'm currently with them because my preferred cable provider (R) didn't have coverage in my building a year ago, but now they do have coverage, so I'm probably saying bye-bye to Telefonica soon. Yes, the service is now technically good, even probably the best (FTTH), but who cares if all their policies (the above is just an example but there are lots more) are set to nickel-and-dime the customers, and to sell more and more and more. You can't even do a technical service call without them spamming you and trying to sell you stuff. R doesn't have FTTH but has a much, much better customer service (including automatic improvements in the bandwidth for time to time, without even asking).

monsterix 12y ago

Super! Looks great works great too! Lately I'd been bothered by poor quality experience and sometimes even spam requests on Skype. Hangouts was never my thing and Firefox Hello seems like a breath of fresh air just at the right time. Keep it up!

suyash 12y ago
another problem with tools like Skype and Google Hangout is the number of concurrent participants.
- jrochkind1 12y ago
  How many does Firefox Hello support? I can't figure out from the page if it supports more than 2 -- which makes me think it's probably 2.

fiatpandas 12y ago

It's interesting, although struck me as weird to bundle/market it as part of the core Firefox experience, especially considering its closely tied to a third party. Seems more extension territory.

azakai 12y ago
You can see it as a pre-bundled extension, I suppose. I think the point of pre-bundling it is to get more attention and in that way to promote WebRTC, which is a good goal. Size-wise, I didn't look at the code but this is likely a tiny extension, it's just a little UI over WebRTC.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  >the point of pre-bundling it is to get more attention and in that way to promote WebRTC // Presumably though instead of FF dev team making a Moz sponsored extension Telefonica came to them and said "we'll give you this barrel of cash if we can put our name on a new part of FF that gets default installed". Indeed Moz could have just had Telefonica named as devs on an extension and shipped it as default - which would seem more natural. The way it is makes it more like a marketing move to hijack FF as a place to put an advert. Appear.in seems to work fine and without messing with my browser chrome.
  - tedmielczarek 12y ago
    I would be extremely surprised to find out that was how it happened. More likely we (Mozilla) just have contacts at Telefonica from our Firefox OS work, and Telefonica happens to have this opentok software which provides a useful piece of making Firefox Hello work, so co-branding was a win/win.
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      Going with that line, was the inclusion of Hello such a complex thing that it needed to be bought in from outside of Mozilla - I'd assumed that using WebRTC as a video chat component made things [relatively] quite facile which is why there are so many implementations popping up. What's the essential feature that Telefonica brings to the table that makes it worth Mozilla compromising their brand across 500 million installs [using Wikipedia figures there] - that's essentially saying that what Telefonica bought to the table is worth, what, > $5 million [assuming 10¢ per install for the brand placement]. Can you expand on the "win/win" part on the Mozilla, and their supporters, side?

cjensen 12y ago

A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. In my view, this is true for most values of X, including Skype, Mail, Word, Excel... To add insult to injury, there is no simple way of disabling the functionality[1]. Firefox Hello is ludicrous. [1] about:config is not a valid value of simple

baddox 12y ago
> A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. I'll agree if you amend "allow a web page to implement X" to "allow a web page or an extension to implement X."
mccr8 12y ago
The underlying technology used to implement this is WebRTC, which is available to web pages. Implementing peer-to-peer real time video communication entirely in Javascript would be difficult, so it has to be provided to some extent by the browser itself.
- nothrabannosir 12y ago
  But, if this is peer-to-peer, what's Telefonica's role?
  - mccr8 12y ago
    I don't know about Telefonica's role, but in general WebRTC needs external servers to deal with things like NATs and firewalls: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure...
    - soapdog 12y ago
      I think telefonica is running the looper service that helps the peers connect to each other... but I am not sure.
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AdmiralAsshat 12y ago

Do they have the specs anywhere on their encryption?

stegosaurus 12y ago
I am also very interested in this. A secure and easy to use solution for web chat is really needed. If it's easy to use but insecure, that simply raises the bar for competing secure solutions to meet, which is a shame.
mbrubeck 12y ago
Here's a good summary: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/82/slides/rtcweb-13.pdf http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/82/slides/rtcweb-13.pdf The peer-to-peer WebRTC connection uses DTLS+SRTP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Secur... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Pro...
- deleted 12y ago
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fulafel 12y ago
Apparently not. The fact that they use WebRTC gives you some properties of the system (assuming you are familiar with per browser implementation details of WebRTC, not just the standard) but not enough to tell what kind of security properties the application provides.

dionyziz 12y ago

Why is this even a thing?

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nolok 12y ago
> I somehow hoped Mozilla would never employ these kind of business models where is user is the product. Then you must be naive, given that this has been Mozilla's main source of income for years.
- jfoster 12y ago
  That's true. Their business model is essentially selling users to search engines. That said, they have always done it quite softly by selling users to the search engine that most of them want to use anyway, and making it very easy for users to opt-out of that arrangement.
  - _nedR 12y ago
    > they have always done it quite softly... That would be because they're a non-profit working for the benefit of said users.
pmontra 12y ago
Me too. I immediately removed the Hello icon when I read Telefonica. Apparently it's because of Tokbox but I won't trust one more telco then I have to.
- nsm 12y ago
  WebRTC is encrypted end to end. afaik Telefonica is only providing a STUN/TURN server so NATed clients can discover each other. You don't have to worry about Telefonica or anyone else eavesdropping.

suyash 12y ago

Now the question is can you enable 'Screen sharing' utility to it? It could then be a killer app for meetings and conferences getting rid of all the expensive external software applications? When I say screen share, I mean not just the browser's screen but the whole computer screen?

DanWaterworth 12y ago
Have you tried using hangouts?
jcheng 12y ago
appear.in offers this, and in my experience has better video quality than Google Hangouts.
72deluxe 12y ago
I am not sure giving the browser permission to poll your entire screen via an API is a good idea - think of the possible abuses.

teabee89 12y ago

I was using vline.com (also using WebRTC) works like a charm.

ffn 12y ago

As an example of WebRTC this is pretty decent... but please work on getting navigator.getUserMedia to screen-capture into a stream more easily; right now, the browsers' screen-capturing apis are extremely wonky and difficult to build applications with.

Shivetya 12y ago

and here I remember the day this all started because browsers had become bloated.

maxerickson 12y ago
Firefox was always about switching to a user oriented focus. Getting rid of bloat happened to be a necessary early step on that path.
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72deluxe 12y ago
I used it when it was named Firebird, and it was buggy. I remember being amazed when Google released Chrome, and Safari was available as a buggy mess on Windows. I still miss Mozilla Composer and Microsoft Frontpage for writing abysmal HTML with <strong> everywhere.

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sehr 12y ago

Built with React.js as well! http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/loop/content/js/ http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compon...

jbeja 12y ago
Omg, I love react, but you fanboyism is just to far.

mgkimsal 12y ago

Guess I'm the odd duck out... Crashes every time I try it - 35.0.1 on Mavericks 10.9.4 :(

nsm 12y ago
Please file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org, or you can email me the details (email in profile) and I'll file it for you.
- mgkimsal 12y ago
  filed (had to get home first) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127178 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127178 Not sure this is necessarily enough info to go on, but it's reproducible on my end for sure - it wasn't a one-off. thanks.

nothrabannosir 12y ago

I hate being "that guy", but what about sites like https://appear.in/ https://appear.in/ that do this without (seemingly?) depending on browser support? Is this using some novel p2p technique that can't be implemented using just JS? When you send a FF Hello invite to a Chrome user, it works fine. I.o.w.: why is this not just a website?

UberMouse 12y ago
Both Firefox Hello and appear.in use WebRTC which is a Javascript API provided by the browser for this sort of stuff. So appear.in does require browser support. Firefox Hello also is a website, it's just running inside the browser. http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/loop/content/ http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compon...
hayksaakian 12y ago
i mean it says: > Hello is super easy to use and your friends and family don’t even need Firefox to join your conversation. As long as they have a compatible browser, they’re good to go. as far as i've read this is basically appear.in but with some native buttons in firefox, and optional firefox account integration.
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jbeja 12y ago
Hello doesn't depend on Firefox, Mozilla have bigger name and better marketing techniques.

tobico 12y ago

Mozilla are clearly becoming desperate to find any distinguishing factors to market Firefox. Sadly, this feels like the beginning of the end for this browser.

olefoo 12y ago
Let's see where this stands three years from now. Mozilla is working on some pretty neat stuff; and is paying attention to the rest of the world, not just the American/European/Japanese market. Also since they are a foundation owned corporation with a public benefit mission https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ they can take a longer-term view than some of the other big players. Having played with one of the flame dev phones for FirefoxOS I wouldn't be too surprised if within the decade they are dominant in areas of the world that don't have an installed base ( rural india, sub-saharan africa outside of SA, etc. ). Remember that more people are going to acquire mobile internet devices in the next 5 years than were on the internet in 1998.
- drdaeman 12y ago
  The underlying problem and a source of debate is this "public benefit" part, as perceived by some engineers vs others. The problem is simple to describe, but nearly impossible to solve. On the one hand, ask anyone whenever they want to have video conferencing without having to download additional software and based on open standards blah blah — and you're likely to hear "yeah, that's cool, where do I get it?" before you finish the questions. Because, without going in much detail this all sounds awfully good. On the other hand, a few engineers have issues with this. Questions like "why this is bundled in giant monolithic browser blob" are perfectly valid. Especially those who value classic UNIXes' approach to do things, may be well dissatisfied with this kind of stuff being done in the name "public benefit", considering this as yet another case of "dancing bunnies" problem, with masses being ignorant of the issues.
  - mkal_tsr 12y ago
    I agree. I'm very against the style of discussion about these topics, it's very "you agree with this feature 100% or any criticism is seen as an attack" rather than an attempt to debate the merits of features / implementations.

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windlep 12y ago

Since no one realizes that Mozilla actually develops stuff in the open (vs. code/project-dumps like Google after its 'done'), here's the Mozilla project page for Hello (previously called Loop): https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop A bunch of the hypothetical questions here on HN could be answered easily by skimming over this page and some of the pages linked in. Edit: I'm not suggesting its bad or good to get a project to a more polished state before open-sourcing it, mainly just pointing out that for good/bad, Mozilla does happen to keep the entirety of the process very open.

pekk 12y ago
I don't have any problem with people making open source projects and then publishing them once they are finished. It's still open source.
- siddboots 12y ago
  It is open source, but there are different models of project development. In particular, there is a lot of nuance in your term "once they are finished". If a company periodically dumps a large project tree online but continues the development and management behind closed doors, it makes it very difficult anyone else to make use of or build upon the source without forking it completely (and forking has its own risks). This is why windlep is pointing out that Mozilla "develops in the open", as opposed to being merely open source.
  - click170 12y ago
    Nitpick: I don't think there's anything wrong with a closed development model and open sourcing the result, but IMO it's not open source until the code is available. If you're starting a project with this intention, I don't think it's really Open Source until your first code dump is publicly accessible - at which point, go nuts with branding it Open Source. I also don't think it's unfair to do code dumps, if the code is available then job done. Other projects provide additional hand holding, but in my opinion that's a feature that the original authors have the freedom to choose to not implement. I'm really pleased that Mozilla have chosen an open development model.

mkal_tsr 12y ago

I've updated my user.js helper/repo to disable Hello/"codename Loop" - https://github.com/m-kal/PrivatePanda https://github.com/m-kal/PrivatePanda ----- Dear Mozilla, Firefox is a browser. Can you please stop with the feature creep? That'd be lovely. Remember, you're a browser, not an operating system. Oh, you'd like to be an operating system? Cool, then make an OS (o hai there Firefox OS) and keep that functionality there. Stop adding extra features that are not needed to browse the internet. It seems only Lynx cares about an authentic node-to-node / client-to-server relationship without all the privacy concerns :-(

toolz 12y ago
You realize this is just a fancy bookmark, right? Lynx has bookmarks, too.
- mkal_tsr 12y ago
  Can Lynx activate this feature at all? Lynx may have bookmarks, but as far as I can tell, Lynx does not have WebRTC support, which means it can not be exploited to share private LAN IP addresses, nor can it access web cams. Firefox, like Chrome, is going overboard with non-web-browsing features. Some less technical users surely will appreciate that, but at some point it becomes less of a browser and more of a pseudo-OS. If people don't voice their opinion against this direction, then Mozilla will continue down this path. I don't think it's too much to ask a web browser to be a web browser and nothing more.
  - toolz 12y ago
    Then your argument is against webRTC, not Hello.
    - mkal_tsr 12y ago
      I am also against webRTC, I don't think it's mutually exclusive. Mozilla is signalling with this that they're looking to push applications that leverage their feature-set.

tn13 12y ago

I am happy to see Firefox adding any sort of functionality as long as they dont break the web standards. For example it would be bad if Firefox Hello comes as "hello.firefox.com" but does not work in Chrome. But if it comes as a Firefox only extension I am fine with it.

nsm 12y ago
It uses webrtc. The link you share will work on any browser that has webrtc. The icon is only to make things easier if you use firefox.

Sir_Substance 12y ago

It seems there is a lot of confusion going on here. Firefox hello is a website that implements webRTC based video conferencing in a browser agnostic way. The "firefox hello" button that has shown up in recent versions of the browser is a bit of UI magic over an API to this website. The video conferencing code is not implemented in the browser. If you send a firefox hello link to a chrome user, it opens the webpage when they click on it instead of the UI element. I actually think it's really neat, and have replaced skype with it since it works so widely and doesn't require everyone to have an account to use it.

MichaelGG 12y ago
This is a like a case study in how to [not] handle messaging towards technical users. There's no issue here, but it just appears like Firefox is now shipping apps or something, rather than essentially a bookmark.
- knodi123 12y ago
  that's certainly what I came to complain about, until I read the comment you replied to.
- jonchang 12y ago
  What led you to believe that the linked page was targeted towards technical users?
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Not saying it was. Just that FF has a lot of sensitive, technical, users, so Mozilla has to deal with this insanity it looks like. Thus, they might consider having a "how it works" or "why" section to calm such users.
    - longlivegnu 12y ago
      Can't they just look at the source code?

samvj 12y ago

Since they're doing it at the browser level, it would have been nice if they provided screen sharing instead of this. Google Hangouts-like screen sharing without the need for an account would be awesome.

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dorfsmay 12y ago

Is the connection peer to peer once established? Btw, I tried hello a couple of weeks ago and it felt like voice/video over the net 5 or 6 years ago, no proper echo cancelation, similar to the old video plugin in pidgin. Also, there is no text IM.

dkharrat 12y ago
It's based on the WebRTC standard, so in general, yes it's peer-to-peer. However, in cases where the peer-to-peer connection cannot be established (e.g. a user behind symmetric NAT), then a third-party relay server is used (called a TURN server) which acts as the intermediary between the peers (sort of like a proxy).

shmerl 12y ago

When is anyone going to make a pure WebRTC service for calling phone lines that would work in the browser? All existing ones require some native code plugins. Not sure why no one made such service yet.

hox 12y ago
Twilio Client (https://www.twilio.com/webrtc https://www.twilio.com/webrtc) does this through just JavaScript and webrtc, using Twilio as the bridge. granted you need to wire up to the JavaScript, but it's fairly simple.
- shmerl 12y ago
  Do they have a WebRTC based service for users (not for developers) similar to Google Talk / Hagnouts phone calling which doesn't necessarily create a dedicated phone number for you, but allows calling other phones? I'm not interested in building my own service using their API, I want simply to use one like that without a need to debug weird issues in native plugins.

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songco 12y ago

Oh, when Mozilla add "Share Screen" feature to hello?

visarga 12y ago
Use VNC, it's better anyway. I run vnc over a ssh tunnel to make it safer.
- m_mueller 12y ago
  So, what's your workflow when you need to see someone's screen? Please note: You might talk to this someone for the first time and (s)he might not be an IT person.
anoopelias 12y ago
When will they add a public API - so that you can develop share screen or P2P games or whatever..
nsm 12y ago
Seems like it is being worked on - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1126289 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1126289

minusSeven 12y ago

All the negativity aside, anyone knows how this works ?

e0m 12y ago

Can this support multiple conversations at once? Group chat Sqwiggle / Hangout style?

tckr 12y ago
That's definitely a requirement for me to switch from Hangouts …
aragot 12y ago
It doesn't seem so. I've tried with 3 windows (FF Dev, FF and Chrome) and it says "There are already two people in this conversation."

yxhuvud 12y ago

So I imported some contacts. How the hell do I remove some of them? Why wasn't I given a choice of which contacts to import?

nikolak 12y ago

>There’s no account or sign-in required and nothing extra to download. Just start a conversation, send your friend a link and ask them to click it. I don't think this is such a great idea, at least in my case, if I'm sending someone link for them to open instantly then I'm probably already using a platform that supports video conversations - for example Skype, which also has IM and some other stuff that FF Hello doesn't.

kleiba 12y ago
Different people's workflows differ, of course. I can totally imagine this for the video conferences we have with external partners in our group. These are usually scheduled ahead of time, so we could just arrange that people check their inbox for the link. Email is what most people use in these projects, while IM'ing is very exotic and practically not used.

aragot 12y ago

There's already an FAQ entry [1] on "Where is the Firefox Hello button?", and the answer is not an intuitive one. It would have been OK to display the button by default. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-button https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-but...

skyshine 12y ago

Does anyone know if they are planning on including an IM client with it. (I know it doesn't have one yet). Without that it is pretty useless to me.

blueskin_ 12y ago

Oh great, more bloat and potential vulns. Anyone got a way to disable it yet?

jason46 12y ago

So this link is useful for new users. I had no idea how to open it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-button https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-but... Next issue, I'm using a docked laptop and it defaulted to the cam in the folded laptop instead of the cam pointed at me..

jason46 12y ago
Anybody see a way to change the camera?

mikelbring 12y ago

Is it available for Chrome?

dyeje 12y ago

The logo reminds me of HipChat.

Eleutheria 12y ago

Sending a link is stupid. I want my browser to ring when there is an incoming call. Firefox should have an open socket connection to Mozilla servers and deliver services thru that, just like android cloud messaging, like alerts, notifications, push apis, etc.

hardwaresofton 12y ago
Mozilla != Google Funding such services is a big decision for them -- they're the ones that have to support it, keep it up, and pay for it (for the life of the service). As they make money in a distinctly different way from Google, they don't have the same positive feedback loop -- Google is happy to provide you free web services because you are the product.
windlep 12y ago
Firefox Hello does have an open socket connection to Mozilla servers. This is why once you give out the link, Hello can ring the browser to indicate someone has joined the conversation. Since Hello currently doesn't have a Friends list or a way to utilize existing social networks, passing a link to a friend is how you give them permission to ring your browser.

anon4 12y ago

I tried it. It works pretty well over the local lan, at least. What I really want to see is multi-user chats.