Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox? [LWN.net]

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 15:13 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)
In reply to: Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox? by dskoll
Parent article: Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

One example is Slack. Their "huddle" feature (which is basically audio or video chat) rejects Firefox as an unsupported browser, you have to use either Chrome/Chromium or their native client (which I suspect is just Chrome/Chromium disguised as a normal application).

I've also had to switch to Chromium for video chat in Teams, but lately I've been able to use it in Firefox just fine.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 16:01 UTC (Thu) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

> their native client (which I suspect is just Chrome/Chromium disguised as a normal application)

Yes, it's an Electron app, like Visual Studio Code, Atom and many others.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 17:28 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

Hmm, OK. I use Slack in Firefox, but didn't know about the "huddle" feature. I wonder if it does work in Firefox but they don't want to officially support it, or if it uses Chrome-specific APIs?

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 17:45 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

From past experiences, it'll be because it uses WebRTC, and neither Firefox nor Chrome are bug-free in their WebRTC implementations, plus Firefox (by default, at least) has a different set of codecs to Chrome. I therefore suspect that Slack engineers just assume that your WebRTC implementation has Chrome's set of codecs and Chrome's set of bugs, and refuses to work in Firefox because Firefox isn't going to be bug-for-bug identical to Chrome.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 18:16 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

OK, I see. That's too bad. I use the really excellent Galene videoconferencing software, which does use WebRTC and it works fine in both Firefox and Chrome. So that's just laziness on the part of Slack.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 20:50 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]

I wonder if spoofing the User Agent would just magically make Huddle work in Firefox?

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 4:38 UTC (Fri) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link] (1 responses)

EU has this new digital markets act, that might forbid such discrimination.

Even though Slack seems to have an unhealthy market share of the IM market, I guess they are to far too small to be classified as a gatekeeper and subject to tighter regulation.

Chrome and Google might qualify more easily, but I don't remember reading anything that this particular market domination would be addressed.

(Haven't studied the topic in any detail, so might and guess...)

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 8:51 UTC (Fri) by fishface60 (subscriber, #88700) [Link]

It's not market share, it's that the DMA's scope was limited to consumer messaging and Slack describes itself as business messaging.

This also led to Apple trying to assert that a large enough fraction of iMessage users are using it for business messaging that it doesn't meet the criteria for being a gatekeeping consumer messaging app.