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11mo ago

Teams apparently can't call when using Firefox

Teams also doesn't support multiple "work" accounts, so I had to boot up a laptop to accept the call. 🤷

Firefox @lemmy.ml

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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?
- These days? It's sucked to be an American for decades.
  
  Better than being in a third world country ig. But it's frustrating, because our issues are generally fueled by greed and were entirely preventable
- 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.
- EU resident here, doesn't work for me as well
- Used it today using Firefox on OSX, no issues whatsoever.
- Same for me, tried it today and it worked perfectly
- What the hell does it have to do with being American?
  
  Certain restrictions related to Microsoft Edge are applied less in the EU

Just one more upside to Firefox, less interruptions during work~

Its cool how all these companies are allowed to just lie to you about their products functionality.
- 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
  
  This whooshed a lot o' folks.
  
  Using Firefox makes you a communist?? Maybe you just enjoying have your data harvested by Google.

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.
- When I'd search "(location) weather" on Google (e: in Chrome) and 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
  
  Just checked: Duck Duck go displays the forecast right on top.
  
  Android addon to fix this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/google-search-fixer/
  
  They do worse than this. Search it on a weather site, pretty easy to get around
  
  Got a name for that chrome spoofing add on for FF on a PC by chance?
- User agent string.

This is not mildly infuriating this is the free internet being eroded through Google’s control of Chrome
- I think this is more a push towards tightly couplings with Edge.
- No it seriously means the feature isn't available yet in the browser. Like there is a part of Firefox missing that they need to use the website. Basically all websites are coded in HTML, css, and js or a form of that. The browser controls them and the code operates out of it. If a feature is on chrome and chromium but not Firefox, the site won't work on Firefox. Not sure exactly what is missing but it is mozillas fault not Microsoft.
  
  Google meets and zoom work perfectly well in firefox, this is just ms stuff
  
  Firefox implements everything the various web standards require. There are a few non standard features that Chromium implements that certain websites take advantage of, but the fact that their code isn't portable is not Firefox's fault. As for Teams... Microsoft's just being a dick: if you change the user agent it works just fine.
  
  MS purposefully not respecting the standards for its softwares to only work on their own browsers is a feature since they made Internet Explorer. It's an industrial strategy to trap the users into their own tools. It's to the point they don't respect even their own standards in the case of docx for example so that there is no easy interoperability with libreoffice.
  
  It used to work months ago. I’d try switching the user agent to spoof Chrome.
  
  They support meetings in Firefox so it's a bit weird why they would block calls... They're effectively the same thing
  Additionally, if you change your userAgent to be Chrome things are working pretty good in Firefox as far as I've tried it (not too extensively)
  
  Last time this came up, just spoofing the Firefox user agent to Chrome made it work perfectly. Maybe they block it because they haven't tested it on Firefox yet, but it works as well as it does in Chrome.
  And if they haven't had the time to validate it in Firefox yet, that is a conscious choice by MS to not dedicate time specifically to validating in Firefox and treating it as a second-class web browser.

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 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.
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.
- 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.
  
  Chrome is the new Internet Explorer.
  
  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).
- 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..
  
  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 :/
  Edit: never mind, I found it here: https://sopuli.xyz/comment/6224391
  User Agent String that works for me:
  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
  
  Do you get all teams functionality? I tried user agent sppof but couldn't join conference calls properly on work teams so back to Chrome or was
- 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.
- Teams used to have more features on Firefox. Microsoft has intentionally started stripping off shit to move people to edgium
  
  Oh... I didn't know this. Maybe it is intentionally malicious then. Hmm.

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!
- Sidenote:
  HTTP user agents have become absolutely bonkers over the years.
  
  I like how this guy explains the history of browser user agents and why they have this strange configuration today:
  https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
  
  Useragent parsing is still a thing?
  It is similiar in nature to greping html.
  
  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. https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/
  
  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.
- 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.
- 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! :)

Ms teams sucks in a big way

Teams won't even open on Safari. Must use a chrome-based browser (like... Edge!)
- To be fair, I don't know many complex websites that work on Safari
  
  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).

given the love Teams receives, it not working in [ insert browser ] is definitely a feature

I used to freelance for a big corp who used MS teams and provided me with separate credentials, while also having my private MS account, that I occasionally use for other corps I worked for.
It was a hell using it that way. I had to run each one in a private Brave window to be able to work on two different accounts.
I know they only use MS teams, bc their infra is all based on MS, and it probably works fine for them internally. But man, this shit needs to be fixed in some way to account for external people, especially the ones who chose their own stack and work simultaneously with others.
- Apparently the dumpster fire known as MS Teams supports multiple accounts now.
  
  It does, but it basically reloads the app when switching. Which, if I recall correctly, means no notifications from the other account and really slow swapping between accounts. When I had to use multiple accounts I would use the app for one and a browser for the other.
- Teams rarely works well internally.

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.
- 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.

You can make it work by changing your UserAgent string (there's plugins for that) to some older chrome version to make things work.
- 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.
  
  Not sure that's how monopoly work, the folks on both end will still have data of their actual userbase
  
  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
  
  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.

Im sure if you swap user agent to chrome they wouldn't give a fuck
- It crashes right after a call starts.
  Everything else works fine though.
- It'll complain later that the browser is blocking its spyware and adware.

I works for me without a user agent change if I enter through the Microsoft 365 teams workspace and not a teams share link.

Teams also doesn’t support multiple “work” accounts
Firefox lets you have completely separate profiles with separate accounts (URL: about:profiles, it can't be linked to for security reasons) and also an official extension to have another layer of profiles on a per-tab basis (containers).
- 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 half of the time, 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.

I feel validated, reading about my daily struggles with Teams.

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.
- I mean, there’s probably some workaround involving faking the microphone, right?

It really can't. If you spoof the user agent it'll crash immediately after a call starts.
I suspect they use something extra on top of normal WebRTC.

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.
- 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.
  
  she may have been on the new one, i don't remember.

can't, or won't?
- Apparently it can when changing the user agent so it seems like it’s more won’t than can’t.
  
  I'm not surprised. I guess they follow on Google's footsteps of anti-competitively neutering search results for things like weather and stocks from Firefox for Android vs. Chrome, which work fine if your change the user-agent. -_-

On a bullshit teams call right now. I'd call it not working a feature 😄

I'm 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
- 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
  
  Fortunately, there's an extension that solves that: https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/ajgodcbbfnpdbopgmfcgdbfhabbnilbp
- Same this is how I got teams to work.
- Same, but still sucks
- Same…but with Ungoogled Chromium as Flatpak because it made me feel the least dirty.

Remember when Internet Explorer/Edge was only used to download Chrome. Well, ironically these days I only use Chrome to make video calls.

yet
Pfft!

use teams classic, most professional workspaces are switching to it since the "new" teams came out
- What is the difference? I had an IT guy remote into my system yesterday to delete Teams and install Teams classic
  
  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.

I read this whole thread and didnt find a single person who uses teams inside ferdium like me.
- Is this like Franz ? I used that for a while, was pretty good actually.
  I now use the unofficial teams client, it works ok for me.
  
  Unsure. Also unsure hat unofficial client you use.

I use floorp, it has user agent spoofing. Set it to chrome, works like a charm.
- Or you could just install the extension that does it.
  
  Dude, just try floorp, it is just better.

Jitsi is better
- But I can’t accept a Teams call on Jitsi, can I?
  
  No
- Do you think I'm using teams because I want to use teams??

Microsoft made their minecraft website complete in functional for Firefox. You can't even download the launcher without chrome.... And I don't understand why. What in the world do they need chrome features that Firefox hasn't?
- Wdym? I downloaded it on my PC last week without trouble
  
  Mhh maybe because I was using Firefox on Linux. But I got a 404 when I was using Firefox. On chromium it worked

Works fine for me in Firefox.

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.

Neither can slack.
- I use Slack on Firefox everyday
  
  You use Slack voice calls?

Its telling you to use the webapp. https://teams.microsoft.com
You cant share your desktop in it last i used it, but calls did work.
- It says few opposite of that, i.e. to try the webapp in Microsoft Edge or Chrome, or use the desktop app.
  
  I dont think you understand opposites, and it doesnt detract from the fact that It still works in ff on that url.

Reason?
Firefox does not support Microsoft Teams
Microsoft disabled support for Firefox
Problem for a specific computer/account
- 2 but not because of missing features in Firefox. They just hate competition.

You can use private mode or a different browser to login with multiple Teams accounts.

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
- 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
  
  you sure you'll get video calling that way?

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