
Web version of Skype can not longer be accessed using the Firefox browser - xenreal
https://www.itwire.com/apps/86262-skype-on-web-support-for-firefox-on-linux-ends.html
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xenreal
I see a terrifying problem with this approach. It's like the Microsoft
strategy of EEE. They exterminate Firefox - the last non-chromium browser. And
if it's become a tendency, we will wallow in monobrowser culture dark age
again.

It's not obvious for everyone, but Google started to byte FF. I just can't use
google search in Firefox properly, they force me to train their artificial
intelligence on each search. Google sites are not locked to chrome-based
browsers yet, but they work significantly worse, especially youtube on a
mediocre machine.

But in reality, Firefox is the much faster browser. I develop very large webgl
web assembly unity game (30Mb of code), and Firefox handles with such burden
much better, than chrome.

It's like opera crush. To be compatible with the web, they forced to be
compatible with chrome bugs and hacks. After a long time mimicking to a
Chrome-based browser, they surrendered to darkness and joined the swarm.

Now the last standing browser is under attack of the giant corporation. If we
will not protest, they just swallow us and put onto the glossy walled garden.

~~~
cm2187
But skype is kind of the worst of the worst of Microsoft. Hopefully it is just
a lazy and/or incompetent team rather than reflecting the strategy of a tech
giant.

~~~
dx034
Is it? It's not a great software but doesn't appear overly buggy or
unmaintained compared to other office products. Office products and browser
compatability are always an issue.

~~~
guitarbill
IDK. Skype used to be reliable, but now it seems utterly useless. They took
ages, about a year if I'm remembering right, to bring out Skype for their own
Windows Mobile platform. I've personally hit a bug where the web interface
allowed you to set a password that was incompatible with the app (too long I
think).

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Meph504
I think this maybe more related to that Microsoft is actually doing a massive
rework of Skype, dumping the old Lync infrastructure and front end, and moving
to their "teams" implementation.

In doing so they are dumping a lot of what they consider to be legacy support.
With the advent and popularity of mobile apps, users today are seemingly fine
with being told their their services are only available through this one
channel.

So why take on the burden and effort to support something most people don't
seem to care about (though they should) for what boils down to less than 2% of
the user base?

This new, "we dictate to you, massive, breaking changes, and features you
don't have control" mentality is a drastic change in behavior at Microsoft,
Their adaptability, and building tools that worked on damn near everything, is
what allowed them to dominate the office OS, this new change may play a part
in them reinventing themselves and allow them to become more agile. But I can
tell you, its pissing a lot of people off, from an administration perspective,
their OS, and software are becoming a nightmare to manage when not used as
they dictate.

Sadly though, currently there is no alternatives, Google's G suite might as
well be DOA, they've let their promising online office suite wither on the
vine. IBM never could get their product off the ground.

Aside from cobbling together multiple disconnected 3rd services, its really
difficult to do anything but just site back and let them dictate terms.

~~~
the_jeremy
What's wrong with G Suite? I know a couple companies that use it, and it seems
pretty handy. I mean, there's still Windows and MS Office that Google doesn't
compete with, but hangouts/gmail/google calendar all worked well when I was at
a company that used them.

~~~
Meph504
I use to be a large advocate of gsuite, back in the days of it being google
apps. I still support several non-profits that still use their free
organization tier.

But the fact is, google hasn't kept pace at all, and it largely feels like an
abandoned product.

If you spend sometime comparing the functionality, features, and UI of office
365 to Gsuite, it's nearly impossible to recommend google over them at this
point.

The fact that microsoft throws in the complete office suite for desktop, as
well as a really solid web product at the same price as google is another
thing that makes it hard to recommend them.

I really hope that google, decides to invest more in this product, but until
they do, I can't recommend them anymore.

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newscracker
Microsoft seems to be focusing on cutting costs, and that’s causing these
kinds of issues. It has already invested in Electron (Visual Studio Code) and
Chromium (with Edge moving to it). Skype dropping support for Firefox seems to
be a casualty of the same. The Electron site says that Skype is built on it
[1]. So no reason to support any browser other than Chromium.

I wonder why there hasn’t yet been an Electron equivalent with Firefox
underneath (with Firefox being embeddable like Chromium). Mozilla should
consider focusing on this (if it’s not already in progress).

[1]: [https://electronjs.org/apps/skype](https://electronjs.org/apps/skype)

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Max_Mustermann
There are multiple reports of it working by simply spoofing your user agent to
chrome
[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/apu2u6/](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/apu2u6/),
which makes this even more worrying.

~~~
apostacy
This is exactly what happened with the Skype desktop client. I was able to get
another year out of Skype for my grandmother's PPC Leopard based Mac by simple
nullrouting ui.skype.com.

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combatentropy
What does Firefox lack? I was under the impression that all of Skype's
features could be written in modern HTML and JavaScript. After all, isn't that
what Google Hangouts does?

~~~
NullPrefix
Hangouts doesn't need a plugin anymore?

