Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft IT

Microsoft Rolls Out New Skype for Web; Does Not Support Firefox, Safari, and Opera (venturebeat.com) 97

Microsoft this week revamped Skype's browser-based client with a slew of new features. From a report: The Seattle company this week announced the rollout of a major Skype for Web update, which introduces high-definition video calling, a redesigned notifications panels, a revamped media gallery, and more. It's available on any PC running Windows 10 and Mac OS X 10.12 or higher with the latest versions of Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. The bulk of the new capabilities debuted in preview last October, but they're available widely starting this week. Skype for Web does not support Safari, Firefox, and Opera browsers, Microsoft has confirmed.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Microsoft Rolls Out New Skype for Web; Does Not Support Firefox, Safari, and Opera

Comments Filter:
  • MS has destroyed Edge/Trident so badly that they're moving toward a chromium based Edge.

    Is this good for the Chromium project? Microsoft programmers will be looking at the code.
    Is this bad for the Chromium project? Microsoft programmers will be looking at the code.

  • The Chrome Overlord (Score:5, Interesting)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Friday March 08, 2019 @09:16AM (#58236990)

    So much for open web standards, privacy, and freedom of choice and platform. The march back to the days of IE are progressing so well. I am sure Google is very pleased, indeed.

    I don't know about you, but I will continue to fight it. If a site doesn't at least work on Firefox, it is BROKEN.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday March 08, 2019 @09:37AM (#58237084) Homepage Journal

      It doesn't even support Windows 8.1 or below fully.

      Apparently it doesn't support other browsers because it needs a plug-in that uses the Chrome/Edge architecture. They didn't make one for Firefox.

      So actually it's useless for me too, because even though I use Chrome I'm not installing their plug-in.

      • by Zocalo ( 252965 )
        Wait, it uses a custom plugin to do the heavy lifting? How is that any different from being a standalone Skype client with a browser based wrapper providing the GUI like many of those old IE-based apps used to work? From the initial announcement I was at least assuming they'd actually reimplemented Skype using WebRTC and JavaScript but somehow managed to use some non-standard W3C stuff that's only supported by Chrome and Edge, but this is an ever greater level of lame, half-baked, and fundamentally broken
      • >"Apparently it doesn't support other browsers because it needs a plug-in that uses the Chrome/Edge architecture. They didn't make one for Firefox."

        Yeesh, that is just as bad or worse. So now it not only doesn't use available web technologies and is not browser independent, it also bloats the browser, contaminates it with unknown "stuff", creates more possible security issues, and certainly will not support "alternative" operating systems like Linux.

        Yeah, it is like IE-only days in more than one way.

    • So much for open web standards,

      Unlike Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome D - OES NOT support ORTC (Microsoft's NIH-syndrom variation upon webRTC) - well yet (the plan is for ORTC eventually to be reworked into WebRTC 1.1 at which point both Chrome AND Firefox will support it).

      Which means that if the current Skype for Web works in Google Chrome :
      - either Microsoft has released a special binary plug-in for Google to support their calling protocol.
      (It doesn't seem to be the case, at least with my quick testing Chrome doesn't seem to ask

      • Google very much cares about chrome. Chrome, especially when you have syncing enabled, sends a huge amount of data about your web usage back to google. That data is worth a huge amount of money to them.

      • by roca ( 43122 )

        Google absolutely does care about the control over the Web that Chrome brings.

  • Chrome is the new IE (Score:5, Informative)

    by sremick ( 91371 ) on Friday March 08, 2019 @09:28AM (#58237036)

    This article warrants reposting here:

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]

    • by Luthair ( 847766 )

      The article is wrong though, IE was a problem because it did a bunch of random shit that wasn't a standard or was entirely proprietary like ActiveX. Chrome to date has not done this, however the issue is that developers don't bother to test anything else. Microsoft & Apple have made their own bed there as they don't have easy ways of using them in automated tests (e.g. no selenium docker image) and both are significantly slower than Firefox & Chrome at implementing new features.

      The other odd thing t

      • by Anonymous Coward

        " IE was a problem because it did a bunch of random shit that wasn't a standard or was entirely proprietary"

        just like Chrome
        https://developer.chrome.com/a... [chrome.com]

        there wouldn't be a distinction between the differing browsers if they were universal, like it or not Chrome is the new IE its just a shame that dickwad n00b developers chose to standardize on one made by a fucking NYSE listed surveillance company.

        • by Luthair ( 847766 )
          Those are not normal web APIs, those are for their installed apps and won't work while browsing the web. Note how it also says that support is being removed from Mac/Win/Linux.
  • I wonder how much money was paid to not support competing browsers to Chrome. The Chromageddon of 95 percent market share will arrive soon after Microsoft adopts it for Edge and Apple and Mozilla will get killed in the crossfire.
    • Don't you mean how much time and money did they save by only supporting their browser and the most popular browser? Where edge the most popular then chances are it would be the only one supported.

  • I wonder if this new version will work on my Win7 machine, since it doesn't have cortana installed (TFA says that's one of the reasons for the update).

    There is nothing in the update that aids in doing what I used to use skype for - multiple text conversations, and some voice calling. Cortana integration? When I still played with Win10 systems, that was one of the things I worked hard to block. HD video calls? I removed the camera from my computer because skype kept trying to turn it on, and I don't want to

  • by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Friday March 08, 2019 @09:49AM (#58237162) Homepage Journal

    I went to file this on webcompat.com, but it looks like it's already been filed as #27392.
    View on webcompat [webcompat.com] | View on Microsoft GitHub [github.com]

  • by SuneSpeg ( 662034 ) on Friday March 08, 2019 @10:16AM (#58237286) Homepage
    Destroying the Skype platform isnt easy. MS are close to have exhausted possibilities for ruining this product which was once great..before MS bought it.. Splitting it into private and skype for business was bold, suddenly you had 2 fragments. Then they destroyed the manager so Skype for business suddenly became Skype for employees that work in a company that previously used Skype, because no sane company would implement a solution with a crippled central management. Then MS took the liberty to turn Skype into Teams..which is like replacing a Ghettoblaster with a piece of toilet paper, great for each purpose but not a replacement... So whoever came up with this broken browser solution, really had to think and innovate, to find the last ways to ruin Skype, I think people should appreciate that!
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Skype for Business was a rebranding of Lync. Teams is more or less a soft-boiled rewrite of the same concept, as an Electron application. An interesting side effect of this is that it (Teams) can be fairly easily repackaged to run on Linux. In my eyes, Skype died as a potential productivity tool when it became impossible to show more than ~7-8 messages on a 1080p monitor due to space waste of its non-configurable "chat bubbles". I abandoned it completely when they started breaking compatibility with the sti
  • So much for the new "open" Microsoft. I knew it wouldn't last.
  • Anything below Edge [netmarketshare.com] - at its 4.3% market share - I can understand dropping support for. Firefox is a curious one, though... I guess Microsoft decided that IE and Chrome are 75% of the market, that's good enough to start with!
  • When I logged in using Chromium on my Linux system, the "Call" button was greyed out. It always worked in the previous versions, but now it suddenly didn't - nice of Microsoft not to warn me about this and making me find out the hard way as I was about to start an important business call.

    Talk about failing silently with no information on the website why or how to fix the problem. So what worked? Logging in using Firefox with the user-agent changed to Windows/Edge. And the "Call" button came back!

    Frankly, I

  • God, so happy we switched to Slack for video conferencing. The Skype for Web app has been a total shit show every time I've had to use it, whereas Slack just work.
  • Opera (Score:4, Insightful)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Friday March 08, 2019 @01:56PM (#58238686) Homepage

    How does it *NOT* support Opera? It is literally the same codebase as Chrome (both Blink/Chromium based), the same thing the new Edge is being based on. This means they're checking user agents, and denying ones they don't like. This is 2019, not 1999. STOP THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW.

    • You've never had to support multiple browsers, have you! Opera might indeed be based on the same source code. That doesn't guarantee compatibility. You KNOW that didn't just leave it alone.

      The degree to which any Web site supports any particular browser, is the degree to which the builder of the site TESTS on that browser. Period.

      • by darkain ( 749283 )

        Or maybe it is exactly as I stated. It is already being reported that simply using a user agent spoofer with both Firefox and Opera allow Skype to function just fine. Microsoft is intentionally blocking other browsers for the wrong reasons. Even more interested, Microsoft is NOT blocking the Vivaldi browser, which is also Chromium, just like Opera.

  • It's available on any PC running Windows 10 ... with the latest versions of Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

    Was that latest Chrome+Windows Zero-Day flaw [slashdot.org] allowing Web Skype to run on Windows 7 and/or with other browsers?

  • I've been using Preview Web Skipe on Firefox (actually Waterfox) for a few months now.
    All you need is to use "User Agent Switcher" and to pretend to be Chrome.

    I don't use it to make calls, just occasional chat. So far I have not encountered any kind of problem or issues.

    Given the rumors that you need special Chrome plugin for the voice and video calls, there is absolutely no reason to oust FF or Opera.

    Microsoft are deliberately blocking these browsers.

  • how MS has changed, it's not the same company it was 10 years ago!
    riiiiiiiight...

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

Working...