Puzzled as to why @SlackHQ does not work properly in @firefox and insists on Chrome for voice calls. Was certainly frustrating when trying to receive a call!

It requires significant effort for us to build out support and triage issues on each browser, so we're focused on providing a great experience in Chrome and our desktop apps. We are listening to all feedback, though. 👂

I know a lot of people are very critical of Google building stuff that only works in Chrome, to be honest I expected better of Slack

I never use Chrome, only Mozilla. If that means I can't use Slack, so be it

You can "type chat" in Slack on Firefox quite happily, you just can't do voice calls, to be fair

I know, however Slack should not have a preference. The customer should decide

Would it be preferable for neither browser to allow voice calls, just the native apps?

That would make the most sense and ease for the user.

It would be easier to justify and for people to understand. Although given the app is Electron based and hence JavaScript I think people would ask, why not in the browser, when others have similar things in multiple browsers

Then make it available across all browsers.

Apologies for the trouble here; we appreciate this feedback and will share it with the team for future consideration.

Glad you guys are listening, thank you

Anything to help a great product get better is worthwhile. Feedback is how we all learn

Electron is built on the Chromium webkit. It’s not just pure JavaScript.

Ah, interesting, thanks for explaining that, much appreciated. All making more sense now!

As someone who doesn't like native apps in general ( I mainly use Linux & OpenBSD anyway so native apps for many proprietary software doesn't exist in those platforms because the companies don't care), I disagree. If you can do it in the browser, why not?

Correction: Native GUI apps

Yes

the "native" osx/windows apps are chrome anyway.

Lollerskates... they have to do what is right for their company. If Firefox is a mess to support, are you saying they absolutely must only rollout a feature if it is on all browsers? And, like they said, desktop app works just fine, so there is certainly a choice for everyone.

I think people are frustrated by the "use Chrome" statement and puzzled when open web standards would allow this to work cross browser as other, similar products do.

Should work cross browser and do work cross browser are two different things. I still can't get WebEx to work and have downloaded like 8 things. If it's too much hassle to support, companies won't do it. It's frustrating for users but such is life

Then like everyone else, you find a solution that does work.

This is the same slack that doesn’t build native apps for the same “significant effort” reasons. Slack is good at many things, but dev effort isn’t one of them.

I am inclined to agree, thanks for sharing your view

Use web standards and you will not have this issue. Facebook video and others work fine in all browsers.

I agree. You can always give Firefox users a warning but blocking completely seems wrong to me

Most of us switch user agents anyway when we see stuff like this.

Perhaps that's why every time I switch to a safari tab with slack it says that the page was reloaded because it was consuming significant energy.

We're so sorry for the trouble. Please do drop us a line if you'd like us to look into this:

That sucks!

Yes, it certainly does and it was quite shocking too, I am not surprised Google do this kind of thing but other companies, yes!

I've been a paying customer since the early days of @SlackHQ. We're a diverse team spanning operating systems and browsers, relying on your wonderful service to do our work. This attitude is damaging to the web, and I urge you to reconsider.

We're afraid our first response may have come off a little more limiting that we meant it — we're focusing on Chrome for our calls support specifically, but that does not mean we have no plans to expand to other browsers in the future!

I think you need to accelerate the plans to expand to other browsers. Better to detect feature support in a browser than block everything that is not Chrome!

Are you a developer? Have you ever developed cross platform and cross browser apps?

I've written code is many different situations and am aware of many web development issues but admit I have not done battle on this wrong before but I do remember the "built for IE6 days"

Your view is correct, but they’re limiting themselves. Chrome are dominant right now, but that can change quickly.

Yes. Although I think the dominant browser varies with different groups of people or types of user

The open web isn't Google Chrome. Remember the IE-only days and how awful that was? We have open standards for a reason.

Yes, exactly and feature detection is so much better than browser detection!

I’m sure @firefox @EdgeDevTools would be happy to hear about your difficulties and the inconsistencies leveraging their implementation of the features you need. Don’t be afraid to reach out.

typical silicon valley elitist thinking that the world revolves around the browser they use in their office.  This is done to check a feature off the list. But its lazy and irresponsible.

We're really sorry you feel that way, Michael. We're certainly not trying to limit users. We'll pass on your thoughts to the rest of the team and hopefully we can improve on this in the future.

Howdy! PM on the Edge team here. We'd love to connect with your team if there is anything blocking you from lighting up calling in Edge and other browsers. Feel free to reach out to me directly (DMs are open or kypflug at microsoft). Cheers!

That's a great offer of help, thank you. I just hope Slack take you up on it and get calling working on all browsers!

Howdy Kyle! Thanks for the kind offer! We're going to raise this with the teams here so they know how to reach you if needed. 🙇

Wow. The idea that you'd view browsers as separate platforms you'd have to "expand" to is frightening and *very* disappointing. I thought you guys had a pretty good thing going, but this will be difficult to see past. (Especially as I'm currently moving away from Chrome.)

I don't think you are the only person puzzled by this.....

Switch to @MicrosoftTeams :) it works in all browsers ;)

I might just be heading that way but Slack has its advantages, although cross browser support is not one of them!

Of course. For example guest-users. But this is the one and only advantage, which I discovered. Since teams is a part of office365 you get onedrive 1tb storage, Office and exchange, etc

Agreed. The other issue is inertia, a lot of people are used to and like Slack but don't like anything MIcrosoft

No but really. At work we tried Teams as alternative to Slack. It was a total joke in comparison, its only outstanding feature was the Giphy integration.

Hmm, Giphy integration sounds like a feature I would avoid!

I am not quite sure if you have useful teams seriously 🤔 on a feature level, teams is superior to slack - especially the office365/SharePoint integration is good...

I am looking forward to using Teams but need to convince colleagues to move there, when they are already on Slack. Often it is people that need to be convinced!

Should we start pinning "Designed for IE6" logos on things again?

Oh no, please no, we can't go back to those day again now, surely!

I hate chrome, love firefox. More apps for the foxy

I am with you there, although I am "flirting" with @brave for their @AttentionToken

Wow. Slack is the last company I expected to see something like this from. This thinking is completely backwards. Web standards are not new. Building for one browser was damaging to the web 20 years ago, and it's still damaging today.

Yes, I agree

Sorry to hear Slack has chosen not to support open web standards.

I was saddened and shocked to be honest. Had to do a quick check to make sure Google did not own Slack!

Designed for IE? I thought we were past that.

I think we all did, although Google seem to be seeking that kind of past

Oh wow, you’re regressing into the days of IE 6, great job @SlackHQ

Back to the days of "browser detection" and not "feature support"!

We misspoke some, sorry folks. We don't mean to say that expanding here isn't a possibility, but at this moment we're not at a spot where we can prioritize this support. This kickstarted an internal discussion, though, so thank you. Appreciate the feedback.

Glad to hear that. Let #Mozilla #firefox know if they can help in any way. Your calls team should have my contact coordinates.

while you're waiting, i'd love to be able to use my yubikey to authenticate myself in firefox....

I've been tasked with looking at alternatives to our existing chat system for an org I help run. Our leading contender was Slack. Not anymore.

Cc @WebIncompat

> be worth several billion dollars > still can't spare the time to build support for another browser

It did make me wonder if Google had bought Slack!

That horrifies me @SlackHQ! Are you suggesting your customers shouldn’t be able to use their choice of web browser?

The day Slack stops working in #Firefox is the day we ditch Slack. Code to #standards, not browsers. We already went through this nightmare with #Microsoft and sites that only worked w/ IE. #Microsoft got roasted for that, Slack wants the same?

Nicely put. I do wish both Slack and Google would back away from this position

Congratulations. You've just reinvented the web as it was in 2002, with IE-only being the norm... 😀

Really?

Ooookay… Switching back to IRC sounds like signifiantly less effort for me then.

IRC is also free and open source. :)

And has all sorts of web clients, apps etc.

"It requires significant effort for us to build out support and triage issues on each browser" Yeah. Welcome to what everybody else has to do as part of their web development job unless they want to get fired.

It’s “This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer” all over again. I was there in the ‘90’s. Please no.

Opensourcing parts of your stack would allow others who are passionate about your product to help you with things like that.

This is some premium anti-web BS. If supporting @firefox is causing you that much of a headache you've done something incredibly wrong. Any pull request that doesn't work in 95% of browsers should be rejected IMO.

What version and OS? Got a URL I can try this on?

This was with Firefox 58.0.1 (64-bit) on Windows 7. To try it you will need a Slack network, I had the picture with an incoming call, not sure what happens if you try calling

Ok, will try it with the Mozilla slack. I suspect that slack are relying on Chromium bugs in WebRTC since they for a long time didn’t support WebRTC properly

Thanks, I appreciate you picking this up

Have you tried spoofing the user-agent string? It may help passing these lame restrictions and placing voice calls. 🤣

I have not tried that, to be honest, not sure if someone else has

I hadn’t yet was going to this morning but the following Male it look like they rely on Chromium bugs