
New Skype for Web is live for Edge and Chrome browsers - vaultcool
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18255848/skype-for-web-hd-video-calling-recording-search-gallery-chrome-edge
======
gnomewascool
What's even more ridiculous is that for Firefox, if you change the "User
Agent" it works perfectly fine[0][1]. Since Opera is now a re-skinned
Chromium, it's highly likely that from a technical point of view it should
also work, if you change the UA. (No idea about Safari.)

It's either extreme laziness or deliberate monopolistic behaviour...

[0]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/apu2u6/the_bad_old...](https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/apu2u6/the_bad_old_days_are_back_according_to_skype_web/)

[1]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/aw1umv/skype_web_i...](https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/aw1umv/skype_web_is_now_blocked_in_firefox/ehjhfbq/)

~~~
atrainedmonkey
In Microsoft's defence, just because its functional, doesn't mean they're
ready to spend time supporting it on other clients from day 1.

They may be planning a more gradual roll out to other clients once they have
confidence with Chrome.

~~~
mcny
» We recommend that web developers avoid UA sniffing as much as possible;
modern web platform features are nearly all detectable in easy ways. Over the
past year, we’ve seen some UA-sniffing sites that have been updated to detect
Microsoft Edge… only to provide it with a legacy IE11 code path. This is not
the best approach, as Microsoft Edge matches ‘WebKit’ behaviors, not IE11
behaviors (any Edge-WebKit differences are bugs that we’re interested in
fixing). In our experience Microsoft Edge runs best on the ‘WebKit’ code paths
in these sites. Also, with the internet becoming available on a wider variety
of devices, please assume unknown browsers are good – please don’t limit your
site to working only on a small set of current known browsers. If you do this,
your site will almost certainly break in the future.

[https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/06/17/building-a-
mo...](https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/06/17/building-a-more-
interoperable-web-with-microsoft-edge/)

~~~
gtirloni
Being a large company, I wouldn't expect every team there to have read that.
Looks like the Skype Web didn't.

~~~
RandallBrown
More likely someone said "We don't want to put effort into testing Firefox
right now."

~~~
mcny
> More likely someone said "We don't want to put effort into testing Firefox
> right now."

The product teams should NOT have to test on Mozilla Firefox. We (disclaimer:
I am not an Mozilla employee. Just someone who loves the web.) have a very
robust Web Compat program [https://github.com/webcompat/web-
bugs/issues/27435](https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/27435)

and Web Compat is very interested in helping product teams.

I think what the Edge team was trying to say above was detect feature support,
not browser vendor. In fact, I would say there are many professionals at
Microsoft willing to help the Skype team use feature detection properly. or
there is always the Mozilla Developer Documentation
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_tes...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_testing/Cross_browser_testing/Feature_detection)

------
rhn_mk1
I think all the people saying that Chrome will become the new IE 6 can feel
vindicated. It's one thing if the browser manufacturer restricts their
websites to it, but it's an entirely different thing if unrelated parties
start doing it.

~~~
ekianjo
We are not talking about simple websites here, but full fledged web
applications. Note that Slack does exactly the same thing for non major
browsers by blocking them out completely.

~~~
macNchz
That was also the argument for why many things needed to be IE-only back in
the day, since they needed ActiveX to be full on web applications.

------
bibyte
Considering that the web was supposed to be both open and decentralized I feel
really sad that most of it is confined to just one proprietary browser.

~~~
bluejekyll
It seems you have the option to use Firefox, and convince friends and family
to do the same.

Personally I like it better for most things, so it’s not like I’m giving
anything up and thus don’t feel bad recommending it to people.

~~~
bibyte
I use Firefox myself. But look at this Skype for Web it doesn't work on
Firefox. It seems to me companies are getting so lazy that they don't even
make an effort to support anything other then Chrome.

------
dictum
Different teams, but Kenneth Auchenberg of Microsoft had quite _a take_
earlier this year, when the Edge team announced the switch to Chromium.

I wouldn't rule out a general attitude of not caring about other
browsers/engines for upcoming projects (in other words, returning to IE6-era
behavior, but with the hand-wavy alibi of open source)

[https://twitter.com/auchenberg/status/1088587621721231361](https://twitter.com/auchenberg/status/1088587621721231361)

------
swiley
I remember saying it seemed like Microsoft doesn’t care who controls the web
as long as the community doesn’t, everyone said that was ridiculous.

------
Jonnax
They should rename it Skype for Chrome.

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malka
who, in 2019, gives a single damn about skype ? It was murdered by Microsoft
many years ago. let it rest in peace please.

~~~
taude
I think it's still pretty common in business. I actually did a web-based
interview for a Unicorn Silicon Valley startup over it. So there's that.

~~~
narrowtux
This isn't _the_ Skype though, it's the old lync with a new design. You
_think_ you can just join a conference call with your normal skype app, but
instead, you need to use their "web" app.

Using the term web app you might think that you can just point your browser at
the URL and join, however, they've opted to make you download something where
the actual conference takes place.

~~~
hadrien01
Interviews do mostly use the real Skype, not Skype for Business.

------
pkrefta
What are viable web-based alternatives to Skype ? (Except for Hangouts)

~~~
nat8265639392
Is jitsi any good?

~~~
DoubleMalt
Yes. I use it almost exclusively.

With a browser plugin you can even share your screen and there is a self
hosted version, too.

~~~
jraph
On Firefox, no plugin is needed for screen sharing. I wonder why one is needed
in Chrome.

------
siproprio
Maybe related: If you look at the skype uservoice page[1], one of the most
requested features are people asking to be able to delete their account.

[1]: [https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-
skype-i...](https://skype.uservoice.com/forums/914527-welcome-to-skype-
ideas/filters/top?category_id=341854)

~~~
harrygeez
that's probably more towards Microsoft forcing you to combine your outlook and
Skype accounts and not having them separate

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aasasd
Still waiting for “Skype for email,” wherein notifications of new messages
would be delivered through something else than Skype, namely email.

~~~
JadeNB
Isn't that just e-mail?

~~~
aasasd
If email was what my interlocutors used then sure. You need two people for
this dance, y'know.

~~~
JadeNB
At least on macOS, Skype issues notifications on messages, and I think these
notifications are programmatically accessible. I don't know if the analogous
statement on Windows is true. Isn't it possible to just write a daemon to
listen for the relevant notifications and then e-mail you?

~~~
aasasd
IIRC that can even be done in Linux, but the main source of my lamentation in
the first place is that I can't just close the app and forget about it,
because of an occasional message in a couple months.

(Though, now that I think of it, Skype API on the desktop was there before
version 8―and since they've broken the app quite thoroughly in version 8, I'd
be surprised if the API survived.)

------
jeffbax
Similarly 'wtf mate' is that Google Hangouts was working fine in Firefox for a
while, not at all in Safari… and now it is reversed.

------
s_y_n_t_a_x
Very excited to see this released because it makes use of ReactXP
([https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/](https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/))
which is IMO currently the best way to make native cross platform apps.

------
buboard
Browser wars are back? What happened, the app store wars went over budget?

------
Piskvorrr
Welp. "Made For IE6," long time no see.

------
jmcnulty
Just tried from my Chromebook

"Device not supported"

------
Bhilai
Do Teams and Skype work on same stack in the background ? Why not merge them
both and provide a singular interface ?

~~~
croisillon
I believe Teams is the old Microsoft Messenger with a Skype-like skin

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Gunstig2Snath
Did someone still use Skype?

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
Some people do.

They may not have a need for slack, they may also disagree with the
inconsistent banning of users and servers on discord (if you are in a “wrong
think” server at the time of its deletion there is a chance that your account
gets nuked along with the server even if you are not active in the server.
While other server that have been patently breaking TOS have been given given
a pass by one or two on the safety team), they may of used Skype “back in the
day” and just stuck with it and there are those of us who have to use Skype
because that’s what our clients like to use.

But yeah there are still tons of people who who Skype.

~~~
neilsimp1
We use Skype for Business at my work. I'm not really sure what the difference
is between that and regular Skype. I know Skype for Business is just a re-
skinned MS Lync, which in turn is just a re-skinned MS Communicator from back
in the day. It's a pretty terrible chat client but it's what everyone is used
to using here.

~~~
tallanvor
Skype for Business is very different from Skype. The business version, at
least for online customers is also being deprecated in favor of Teams. --No
clue if/when that will happen if you use the on-premises version.

------
benjymo
On Chromium, Skype loads but clicking "Join call" does nothing.

~~~
qantas94heavy
That's because they deliberately block Chromium by scanning navigator.plugins
for anything with Chromium in it.

------
alexandernst
Does that mean that it will work with the newest Edge based on Chrome? Hmmm...
the entire switch to Edge might actually benefit Microsoft

~~~
joenathanone
You do know that Microsoft makes Skype?

~~~
gargravarr
Microsoft didn't make Skype, they bought it and have been slowly grinding it
into dust ever since. It's nothing like it used to be.

~~~
gilnaa
But they do make it, present tense.

~~~
gargravarr
True. I prefer to look at them as janitors, and not good ones either. They
seem to be un-making it by removing more features than they've added.

