Teams also doesn’t support multiple “work” accounts, so I had to boot up a laptop to accept the call. 🤷
Just one more upside to Firefox, less interruptions during work~
Teams apparently can't call when using Firefox
Submitted 11 months ago by qaz@lemmy.world to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/151c0050-78c6-4bec-8c96-d376b3c25eeb.webp
Comments
Carighan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sanctus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Its cool how all these companies are allowed to just lie to you about their products functionality.
drolex@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
If you use Firefox, you are a communist; and if you are a communist why would you need the glorious tools of corporate communication? Just make do with rotten turnips as Lenin intended
NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Using Firefox makes you a communist?? Maybe you just enjoying have your data harvested by Google.
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
This is likely legacy code. Firefox used to have a lot of issues with WebRTC, so practically all video conferencing systems blocked it. Teams probably instead has some “block Firefox because it doesn’t work properly” check that was written 5+ years ago and none of the current developers are even aware of its existence.
Well-coded ones did feature detection instead of checking the user-agent, meaning they automatically started allowing Firefox as soon as it implemented all the required features.
drathvedro@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Feature detection is usually the way to go. If your website / webapp depends on a particular feature, check if that specific feature exists, rather than checking for particular browsers. Browser checks are still needed in some cases, for example Safari sometimes reports that it supports particular features but it really doesn’t (or they’re so buggy to the point where they’re unusable), but that’s relatively rare.
This is tough to implement when the feature is present, but implemented wrong. Or, even worse, when it’s implemented right, but the most popular browser implements it wrong and almost everyone else follow suit for compatibility reasons, except for one that takes the stance of following standards. I know safari is notorious for this, think pale moon had those issues, too, and there are still echoes from the past from pre-chrome internet explorer, thank god it’s finally dead.
Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Chrome is the new Internet Explorer.
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
This is tough to implement when the feature is present, but implemented wrong
Sometimes it’s doable if you can call the API and check that the result is what you’d expect. For example, a long time ago some browsers incorrectly handled particular Unicode characters in JSON.parse. Sites could check for the incorrect behaviour and shim JSON.parse with a version that fixes the output.
I’ve never worked with WebRTC but I imagine it might be difficult to do that with some of its APIs given they require camera or microphone access (meaning you can’t check for the bug until the user actually tries to use it).
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This is indeed the case. I use firefox daily, including for teams. I have to fake my user agent to do it, but it works. Its purely teams just saying fuck you to firefox…
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Could you share your user agent string please? I am still on the Teams desktop app for Linux, but that’s been discontinued in 2022 already, so I am anticipating the day it will stop working altogether. And I haven’t even managed to log in to teams web with Chromium yet (and no, I don’t want to install f*cking Chrome itself) - I get a permanent login loop on successful username / password :/
kibiz0r@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They might be doing feature detection on one of the more obscure APIs, too. I know there’s some audio manipulation APIs that aren’t available.
Someone complained about Discord deliberately blocking Firefox users because of that, but it turned out that spoofing the user agent would actually break the feature.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Teams used to have more features on Firefox. Microsoft has intentionally started stripping off shot to move people to edgium
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
Oh… I didn’t know this. Maybe it is intentionally malicious then. Hmm.
hellfire103@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Try changing your user agent to a Chrome one (e.g.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36). Works a treat!waigl@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sidenote:
HTTP user agents have become absolutely bonkers over the years.
lawrence@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I like how this guy explains the history of browser user agents and why they have this strange configuration today:
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
There’s an API called “client hits” that’s replacing user-agent. Some of the hints will require the user to provide permission for the site to use them, since they could be used for fingerprinting.
Major browsers (Chrome and I thibk Firefox) are freezing the user-agent. The only thing that’ll be changing in user agents is the major browser version. Other parts including platform will be static. Chrome on Windows will always report itself as Windows 10 for example. www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/
eek2121@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not really. The example listed above is perfectly readable.
Knowing the versions of webkit, browser version, etc. is important due to inconsistencies, new features, mossing features, and deprecated features. Sure it can be faked, but that is on the end user.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 11 months ago
‘Do not parse the Useragent’ is not a thing anymore?
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 11 months ago
Feels like we’re back to 2007 again when spoofing firefox user agent to IE would fix websites not working properly, only now we spoof it to chrome instead.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
thank you, this worked for me! :)
mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
This team block is so agressive to firefox users that it’s literaly hardcoded as if web browser firefox then deny.
You cam override that by changing a parameter in firefox to advertise itself as another we browser. I don’t remeber how i did it but, once i had to use firefox and i just changed that stting in order to advertise me to the host as a edge browser. With that changed i could use teams as normal.
Epic drm.
spongebue@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When I’d search “(location) weather” on Google I’d get a really nice at a glance forecast right on top. Do the same thing in Firefox and I’d get a whole bunch of weather websites I could go to. The former obviously being a better, more direct experience. I found an extension that fools Google into thinking it’s Chrome and all works fine with that.
I’m amazed if this doesn’t violate some antitrust regulation
IntangibleSloth@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Android addon to fix this: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/google-search-fixer/
Asnabel@szmer.info 11 months ago
Just checked: Duck Duck go displays the forecast right on top.
ratcliff@lemmy.wtf 11 months ago
They do worse than this. Search it on a weather site, pretty easy to get around
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Got a name for that chrome spoofing add on for FF on a PC by chance?
ikidd@lemmy.world 11 months ago
User agent string.
vermyndax@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Teams won’t even open on Safari. Must use a chrome-based browser (like… Edge!)
Kayel@aussie.zone 11 months ago
To be fair, I don’t know many complex websites that work on Safari
vermyndax@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s really not as bad as people portray. Most sites do work in Safari. There are some problems, but they’ve been pretty good about licking them over time. It’s passable enough that I only have to punt to an alternate browser once in a while.
I’ve tried to use Firefox, I really have. But Firefox absolutely murders my battery and I’m sorry, but they need to do some serious usability improvements… especially around the container implementation and tab management. It’s confusing as fuck (to me).
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 11 months ago
given the love Teams receives, it not working in is definitely a feature
Evkob@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Have you tried changing your user agent string to Chrome? I know it can sometimes sidestep these types of “errors”. It can be changed manually through about:config under general.useragent.override, or there exists plenty of addons to switch it more easily.
qaz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ve avoided changing my user agent because Firefox’s apperant market share is already so low. I’ve installed the extension and will it try it with my work container though.
Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Just change your Useragent, Microsoft is a bunch of dummies and didn’t even bother to code it in a way that makes sense as a DRM lmfao.
scytale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
The other issue I have with conferencing apps on browsers is that they request access to your microphone even if it’s a one-way audio session (i.e. webinar). It should be set in a way where you can separately join a meeting with audio without allowing access to your microphone.
dukk@programming.dev 11 months ago
I mean, there’s probably some workaround involving faking the microphone, right?
frankenswine@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You can make it work by changing your UserAgent string (there’s plugins for that) to some older chrome version to make things work.
helpmyusernamewontfi@lemmy.today 11 months ago
The problem I have with this though is if enough people on Firefox spoof their user agent to Chrome, it’s gonna look like less and less people are using Firefox and Chrome will eventually have a monopoly.
frankenswine@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think you can spoof per tab/container. i used an exclusive Firefox Profile for the bad/contaminated (read: not privacy respecting) browsing - in there i’d ocasionally switch the UserAgent to make Teams calls.
there’s no way i’d work on a machine with M$ spyware installed and always running
hypertext@feddit.de 11 months ago
They already have a monopoly. The amount of people using FF is pretty small unfortunately. And there’s a bunch of sites that only test in Chrome and sometimes even actively “block” Firefox like here without making an effort to check for capabilities instead of user agent.
PoolloverNathan@programming.dev 11 months ago
Teams also doesn’t support multiple “work” accounts
Firefox lets you have completely separate profiles with separate accounts (URL: about:profiles) and also an official extension to have another layer of profiles on a per-tab basis (containers).
Thorry84@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Also no idea what he is talking about, I have 4 work accounts in Teams. Ever since they rebuilt their frontend to the “New Teams” multiple accounts have been working just fine.
In the past I had multiple Team instances as PWA for different work accounts, nowadays it’s all in one app and works pretty good.
Not to defend Teams, it’s total shit, a lot of shit straight up doesn’t work, including important shit like notifications for new messages and content. But it has come a long way from the days including any image in chat would crash Teams for all participants. It isn’t perfect and the amount of resources it used to do what it does is awful, but compared to most modern apps it’s pretty good.
Just don’t tell a Teams dev Microsoft Messenger did 99% of the same stuff and ran super fast on a Pentium 3 333mhz with 64MB of ram, they’ll cry and you’ll be called out for being a bully.
Thermal_shocked@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You can use multiple work accounts in the app, have some clients that have their clients give them accounts to communicate internally with them. Just have to keep switching.
potustheplant@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Just wanted to point out that this is a feature in the “new” version of teams. Until about a month ago it was impossible to log in to two work accounts simultaneously.
Thermal_shocked@lemmy.world 11 months ago
she may have been on the new one, i don’t remember.
abbadon420@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I feel validated, reading about my daily struggles with Teams.
vox@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
use teams classic, most professional workspaces are switching to it since the “new” teams came out
kralk@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What is the difference? I had an IT guy remote into my system yesterday to delete Teams and install Teams classic
JustARegularNerd@lemmy.world 11 months ago
New Teams is a rewrite of the old Teams client which is intended to be faster and better to develop for MS as it’s based on a newer framework.
However it does seem to still have a few odd bugs here and there. I do find it faster myself though.
Magister@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ in Linux, I had so much problem with FF and Teams that I installed Edge and Teams as a PWA, no more problem with calls and video
bjorney@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Problem with that is that when you click a link in the teams PWA it opens in edge rather than your default browser. I just use the unofficial teams electron app
qupada@kbin.social 11 months ago
Fortunately, there's an extension that solves that: https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/ajgodcbbfnpdbopgmfcgdbfhabbnilbp
unwillingsomnambulist@midwest.social 11 months ago
Same…but with Ungoogled Chromium as Flatpak because it made me feel the least dirty.
DizzyTlacuache@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Same, but still sucks
PrimalHero@kbin.social 11 months ago
Same this is how I got teams to work.
akilou@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
yet Pfft!
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Neither can slack.
chpsnick@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I use Slack on Firefox everyday
maniel@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Yeah, as far as I know it’s not some browser chauvinism, but Firefox not supporting some multimedia protocols, that doesn’t mean it’s Firefox fault though, I’d install some chrome fork just for this kind of interactions
MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world 11 months ago
All you have to do is change your user agent. This is just a way for Microsoft to wash their hands of browser support outside of WebKit
maniel@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
you sure you’ll get video calling that way?
ratcliff@lemmy.wtf 11 months ago
Jitsi is better
Jaysyn@kbin.social 11 months ago
Works fine for me in Firefox.
seedd@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I use floorp, it has user agent spoofing. Set it to chrome, works like a charm.
pedroapero@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
It’s never worked on FF for me. I installed Chromium just to be able to log into several Teams accounts. And tabs are still not working. Classic Microsoft mess.
NoisyFlake@lemm.ee 11 months ago
You can use private mode or a different browser to login with multiple Teams accounts.
Mio@feddit.nu 11 months ago
Reason?
- Firefox does not support Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft disabled support for Firefox?
Kallioapina@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well they are just lying, it works fine with Firefox and has worked fine for years. I live in the EU though. Sucks to be american these days, I guess?
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
These days? It’s sucked to be an American for decades.
meekah@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I have the same issue, but I am also in the EU. however, I just used an extension to spoof my user agent and now it works fine. there is some weird behavior sometimes, like when I call someone it doesn’t actually ring the other person etc.
TedKaczynski@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Kallioapina@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This isnt Hexbear man, wrong instance.
spongeborgcubepants@lemmy.world 11 months ago
EU resident here, doesn’t work for me as well
EnderMB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Used it today using Firefox on OSX, no issues whatsoever.
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
What the hell does it have to do with being American?
imkali@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Certain restrictions related to Microsoft Edge are applied less in the EU
seliaste@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Same for me, tried it today and it worked perfectly