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Technology @lemmy.world

Like A Duck @programming.dev

1y ago

"...is not supported in this browser", fuck you Discord

129 comments

Firefox doesn't implement the AudioData API, which is probably necessary for the waveform viewer and cropping tool Discord presents in the soundboard management UI.
Not everything is about Chrome DRM yall.
- Yet another experimental API only supported by Chrome. Chrome has always been like this, implementing experimental API that hasn't been finalized yet. You might say they're innovating to support new technologies, but actually it's more like they're doing whatever they pleased, as demonstrated by their removal of jpeg xl support despite web communities plea not to do so (a new more efficient image compression, but not made by Google so screw it), pushing manifest V3 and ad topics, and recent push for web environment integrity API.
  
  EEE yall
  
  How can they not support jpg xl? It’s such a huge thing
  
  I think Moz helped write and supports this. I even think it's (partially enabled in nightly?)
  Not sure if these built in decoders are supported though. Seems a bit dangerous to expose native codecs directly from the web to be honest, since you'll end up with wildly varying support across browsers.
  
  Firefox and Safari is also implementing experimental features often.
  
  I remember ages ago websites were all focused on "works best on Internet Explorer" or "please use Netscape for the best experience"
  We managed a good solid decade after that where browsers all somewhat caught up to each other and now we're going back that way again, with each website just YOLO implementing APIs that aren't fully supported (with no polyfils or fallbacks)
  When you did that back in IE7/8/9, you missed out on rounded corners or drop shadows, now whole parts of apps won't work unless you're on chrome 🤯
- Thank fucking people like you. The average Lemmy user just knows everything.
  I have seen so many Lemmy users think they are better than Reddit users. Truth is, you are all fucking ass holes you are just different kinds of ass holes.
  None of us agree with Google's choices but for fucks sake not everything is because Google chose it.
  Sometimes it's just in the damn browser. Like fuck off.
  I use Chrome and Firefox and have two different online personas with both.
  
  If you clicked the link. It says experimental technology. It's not mozilla's fault Chrome is adding features that are not standard. Sites like Discord for utilizing non standard API's.
  
  is the other one less touchy?
- Any reason FF hasn't implemented this?
  
  Because Firefox is like a democracy, they prioritize work based on number of votes on issues/feature requests. The AudioEncoder API has literally just one vote, and the overall WebCodecs API that it's a part of only has five votes. This shows that there's very little demand for it, meaning very few sites actually use this (that or the vast majority of Firefox users don't use/need this feature). Why bother focusing your efforts on implementing something that most users don't care about? The higher priority things that most Firefox users care about is stuff like performance, and Mozilla have been making some good progress too on that front.
  
  This is an experimental API that hasn't been finalized yet. Firefox devs has limited engineering resource and simply can't keep up with Chrome's push to implement experimental/proposal API. Safari also hasn't implemented this yet because they also usually wait until the API finalized, which can take quite a while.
  
  dont show firefox users any modern web feature
- It appears the Reddit users that don't read further than the title have arrived on Lemmy.
  
  Shocking news: people are people everywhere, not just on 'rival' platforms.
  
  Care to elaborate? I can't make sense of your response
  
  Yeah unfortunately it looks like they are here too, oh well at least it's money out of spez's hands

And their desktop client technically is a browser without omnibar.
- Electron is not just a browser. It's more like a native app framework that just happens to use HTML and CSS to render UIs. You can do anything the OS lets you do, not just what a browser environment would let you do.
  
  Electron is an unholy fusion of Chromium and Node.JS. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't 'just happen' to use HTML and CSS. It's literally just a browser with most of the default browser UI being hidden. Something like React Native would better fit your definition.
- But probably Chromium right? They probably didn't make all Discord functions work for Firefox as that would require some extra work probably.
  
  Yes, electron.
- It's either Electron or Chromium Embeded Framework.

I’m a little baffled by this one. File upload isn’t exactly some new HTML5.1 feature or anything. There’s no good reason they can’t have this handled properly.
- It’s probably the AudioData API.
- I bet if you switch user agents it works just fine.
  
  Here's what happens when you spoof a Chrome user-agent.
  
  Just like Google search on Firefox Mobile.

I ditched Discord a few weeks ago. I moved to Matrix!
- Not to be discouraging, but i managed to quit discord for a few months, but i returned again, turns out many projects, even open source, use discord for discussion only
  
  So why not encourage them to move to the Matrix?
- what is this matrix you speak of?
  
  The Lemmy of chat apps but not there yet for video/screen share for multi person rooms
  
  matrix.org
- Voice channels work perfectly! I'm waiting for screen sharing.
  
  Push to talk or voice activation would be good
  
  It's already implemented 😎
- I also quit Discord 2 weeks ago when my account was disabled for alleged self-botting the second time. Self-botting means using a script to automate your user account. I never did that.
- Matrix is great, reminds me of a more secure discord. At least this one can be bothered to even try implementing end to end encryption

There's really no reason to be mad at them in this particular instance. Their client is Chromium-based (Electron) so they will optimize their new features for that engine first. There's probably less than 5% users who Discord from browser, let alone Firefox, and I think I'm being generous with that number. Additionally, some things are harder to implement (or even impossible) in native web rather than Electron, that has all the NodeJS integrations.
- There's probably less than 5% users who Discord from browser, let alone Firefox
  There are dozens of us! Dozens!
- File upload is not a chromium feature, it's a super old basic feature. It's just their pittiness and upcoming drm implications. I bet if you set your user-agent to chrome it woould work just fine.
  
  Firefox doesn’t implement the AudioData API, which is probably necessary for the waveform viewer and cropping tool Discord presents in the soundboard management UI.
  Not everything is about Chrome DRM yall.
  Edited to add screenshot of spoofing user-agent on Firefox and getting an error:
  https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/4edb0d24-0c2a-4610-b7b2-eed07a3c7d24.png
  Here’s what happens when you spoof a Chrome user-agent.
  https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/d3b96401-956b-4eab-bc5c-64b0743feae4.png
  kibiz0r@midwest.social
  
  This dialog doesn't do just file upload, after you upload you can cut the sound file into a 4-second clip, inside the client. My bet is that it might technically be possible to do it in Firefox, but not with the same exact code as with chromium, and thus they decided they don't care.
  
  I haven't used soundboard yet, but I'm pretty sure it isn't "just" an HTML5 file upload. Perhaps it's as you said, they run checks on the file being uploaded. Maybe it will work, maybe it will crash in some use cases because they don't have a polyfill for some specific API they use. So instead of dealing with user complaints about crashes they just disabled the feature.
  I'm also not sure why you're upset with Discord for implementing DRM for uploaded files. If they don't, they will get sued by the companies enforcing that DRM, so hate on those companies instead.

codes a desktop OS specific program coded in C just to spite you
To be honest I absolutely hate everything being a browser app.

element / matrix instead

"Press THIS button if you want to enter anyway".
I think I need to fill a patent for this idea, since it's brand new, fresh and nobody has ever heard about it...
- As other comments have pointed out, Firefox doesn't necessarily support the necessary APIs that Discord is using for this. I have the same issue where neither Firefox don't support the in-browser MIDI API, so I need to have Chrom(ium) for a webapp that lets me configure some MIDI hardware that the manufacturer provides zero computer interface for.
  I'd like to use Firefox for everything, but there will always be some edge cases like this as long as there are APIs or other features that it doesn't yet support. Of course not to say that securely implementing every new API is trivial, but that's just how it is right now

There is FOSS wrapper for discord called webcord, if you have to use discord but want a bit more privacy.
- 3rd party apps tend to trigger discords sussy user detection and force you to add phone number
  
  Webcord is hardly a 3rd party app. It's essentially just a specialized web browser for the discord site.
  
  To blacklist your number and ban you?

Eventually I can see discord discontinuing their web client to push you users into installing their spyware.
- They already have Windows on your machine. What more can they get from you with Discord?
  
  Windows is NSA, discord is CCP
  
  I am a Linux master race user. I don't use Windows.

Discord is such an obvious "stay the fuck away from" product.
- With the same critical mass of users that most proprietary social media have, unfortunately. You'll be lucky to find certain communities on Matrix at all.
  
  Yep. Those companies make it easy to join so they capture big user bases and become the defacto standard. I had a bad feeling about discord from the beginning. Glad I managed to stay away. But I'm old and not really interested in most "communities" online, so it's an easy decision for me. With instant messengers on the other hand...

I said 'fuck you" to Slack for similar reasons. Going to same the same to Discord now.
- Because firefox doesn't support it? Don't see why it's their fault
  
  They implemented a feature that is only available in Chromium and not part of the web standards yet. It's no different than websites that would only work on IE 20 years ago because of some proprietary Microsoft thing.
- I wish I could say fuck you to slack. Unfortunately, my office relies on it.

I tried to use lyft on my computer yesterday to download a receipt for my expense report, it didn't let me, kept telling me to download the Android app...
- Everyone wants to force you to download their app now so they can collect your data, shove notifications down your throat, and push ads.
  In the age of the internet, your attention is the most valuable thing a business can have and it costs them virtually nothing to harass you into giving it to them because people have no spine and won't hold it against them.

such a discord

Looks like they're prepping you for browser drm lol. Go decentralized and get off discord.

People use discord in the browser? Damn boi
- Never use an app for what should be a web site.
  
  It works better for me as an app. I don't like my browsers to be cluttered like that. But if it fits your usecase
- At least you can block some of the telemetry with uBlock or similar
  
  Fair, but from a UX and technical perspective it's a pain in the ass to use it like that
  
  Why would you want to block their telemetry?
  It is not like they're using it to serve ads to you, and it should be better for everyone for developers to make decisions based on how users are actually using their app, no?
- Yes as I manly use it on phone
  So for the once on a blue moon when I'll open discord on my PC, the browser is enough
  
  Makes sense
- It actually always worked better for me in my browser
  
  That’s my experience on my machine running Ubuntu. The reason was that Discord ran in their snap sandbox, while my browser is not sandboxed. This leads to the sandboxes app not working together with xdg-desktop-portal, which means that screen sharing doesn’t work.
  
  Dafuck haha. What computer do you have?
- Discord is a web app, there's no other way. You either use your main browser or the one they're bundling it with.
  
  If it's just a WebApp, then why does one of the commenters have issues to run it without the browser?
  See: https://feddit.de/comment/2192027
  Edit: And I know that you're right technically, still there is a difference in how you run it when using a browser vs Webapp.

129 comments