Skype for Web arrives to bring the world together. As long as the world is on Chrome and... Edge? Good news, everyone! Now you can shout "Hello? Can you hear me?" at Skype on the web just as if you were using the app. Unless you want to use something other than Chrome or Edge. Having spent a few months in preview, the new-and-improved version 8 desktop-alike Skype for Web has gone live. Depending on how you feel about the …
"Still better than the skype for business "web app" which takes you to the download page for a windows installer. I think that skype and I have very different definitions of "web app"."
I think Skype have a different idea of "for business" to everybody else too. Animated emojis of bombs going off and facepalms, massive memory footprint, it's tendency to switch between chat windows whilst you're typing (which means when you're typing "that guy is such a prick" it inevitable jumps to the window of your colleague named Guy who gets "guy is such a prick" sent to him). Top that off with its propensity to crash at the most inopportune time and not pick up where it left off.
Personally I find myself using the angry, face-palm and explitive emojis rather a lot in a business setting.
Can't say I've had the problem of the client switching chat windows mid typing, and I've rolled SfB out to multiple clients (many thousands of endpoints).
But the rest I agree with.
Although it's still better than Teams.
Chrome is officially the new Internet Explorer.
If you only support Chrome, then you don't support the web. If you don't use Chrome, don't expect all sites to work, and those that do don't work correctly half the time. Even some new Google services refuse to work in anything but Chrome these days.
Microsoft promoting non-standards to control you for profit? NO ... gasp!
This is what happens when web standards are pushed for a decade, then 2 greedy companies shit all over them without objection. Now you see why they "donate" to standardization, to fuck you.
the only reason is, I imagine, to kill off skype application in the long run, and thus make MS browser browsing an even more (non-)compelling reason.
btw, skype for android has been refusing to update / install on my (rooted) android 6.0. Fortunately, there's still skype lite for those poor bastards in the not-so-3rd-world-any-more India, which works verywellthankyou. And with much less of the down-your-throat-we-know-better-whats-good-for-you shit in mainstream skype app.
We have both and after proving that Skype for business works as well on our corporate machines as a string tin can and mid 90s video playback (and that's before we mention our developer machines which work even less well since Skype for business Web plug in is required) we managed to convince the powers that be to stick with webex since it mostly works (once we figured how to kill with fire the annoHAS JOINED THE CONFERENCEs you'd think it'd be easy to turn off but LINE UNMUTEDich sucks)
With a twist though:
Small company, lets call it S, with limited revenue is bought by big company 1 for an ungodly amount of $$$$$$.
Many question the spend and rational.
Eventually, big write off at company 1.
Trusting in the adage that one is born every minute, company 1 finds company 2, known for having more cash than brains and its desperation to diversify.
Company 2 buys the unloved service, for boatloads of $$$, albeit less than the first purchase, and brings to bear its well-known Muck-it-up skills. That’s where we are at.
Future? Well, company 2 is also known for a tendency to throw its toys away when not many kids play with them. Or when new shiny has caught its attention. Or when it, not infrequently, it has sufficiently mucked up the product. It’s made kids all over loath to trust company 2 new toys...
I do. I actually find it faster and more stable than Chrome and far faster than Firefox. I'm actually seeing most people using Chrome for 2 reasons: 1. they have always used it and 2. they simply believe that Edge is still Internet Explorer and suffers from all the same issues.
I also hate the way that pretty much every other browser has an ugly non-standard gui. The rounded tabs at the top of Chrome are so ugly and clunky. Why not render with system controls. Firefox is a little better and Edge, though to perfect is better.
Every browser benchmark and browser based speed check I run shows Edge as the better performer as does more subjective day to day use. I may bin it when MS make the engine move but time will tell.
SfB is already on the fast track to oblivion, being replaced by MS Teams, whose web client... Too early in the morning to go there. Consumer Skype has momentum behind it, but my 20-something progeny and their circle of friends have succeeded in drawing me into the Discord universe. The experience on Discord (which also has a Linux client) is for most purposes better than Skype, although it doesn't offer POTS access. But our carrier grade SIP service (from a budget provider used by call centers) and Linphone for Windows, Linux and Android close that gap. Still, its good to see Skype is still trying to compete. Given that MS is moving to Chromium's Blink engine for its next browser, I see this as more of a challenge to the Firefox team to step up. FF has vastly improved its usability as an O365 client over the last year, and that tells me its devs are up to the task -- as long as they're not sidelined to ensure payment of some executive's bonus.
Here's yet another reason I would have preferred Microsoft to have partnered up with Mozilla rather than surrendering to the Chrome Pandemic. After all, they're theoretically in competition with Google, so why not partner up with an enemy of the GoogleChrome browser instead?
They could have had the added benefit of dropping further Outlook development in favor of improving MS Exchange support in Thunderbird (the TBird developers would have appreciated the help). But we've never accused Microsoft of being *smart*, just corrupt.
While I could understand partnering with Mozilla instead of adopting the Chrome engine, I can't really see a rationale for killing Outlook for Thunderbird - Outlook is far, far more advanced and tightly integrated with Exchange, adapting Thunderbird would take years, and it would become far less friendly to other mail systems.
And unlike Edge, Outlook+Exchange are real cash cows for Microsoft. It wouldn't be smart at all killing it.
"requires Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge running on Windows 10 and macOS 10.12 or higher."
OSX doesn't come with Chrome or Edge .. so now sure how thats supposed to work for most OSX users.
Still, I'll stick with the desktop version - am sick of having things getting broken when something or other requires my browser cache to be cleared.
Judging by the browser requirements, at least.
I'll stick with Wire then, thank you. (a) written by the people that wrote Skype when it worked and (b) not Microsoft, thus a tad more respecting of privacy.
Also, there's no way I'm polluting a Mac with Chrome. Chromium, maybe, or Iridium, but not Chrome.
I only ever use Skype for messaging so the web client was a welcome departure from the ever more clunky and bloated desktop client.
As a Firefox user I've got this latest web version to work by using a user agent switcher add-on. First of all I hate the UI changes - the chat window is now ugly and stupid. Secondly, whenever I try to paste in some text, either via Ctrl-V or by using the right-click menu, the tab/window which is running Skype instantly shuts down via a refresh!
A bit unfortunate for Linux fans, those not in the vanishingly small group of Edge users, or those simply giving Google's products a wide berth.
Since the vast majority of Linuxistas eschew both of those groups as if they were lepers, I can't imagine why they would even consider this; they would instead use the client.
For that matter, why in the world would anyone want to use a Web-based Skype, even if it did work on something other than the most notoriously leaky browsers on the face of the planet?
Forget about Skype. My idiot sister just bought our parents one of those Facebook "portal" gizmos that sits in your house and follows you around with its camera, supposedly so you can video chat with your "friends" whenever you want.
If they expect me to join Fecesbook just to chat with them on that thing, there's going to be a lot of yelling and screaming.
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