slack.com - Huddles are not supported on Firefox

[webcompat-bot]

URL: https://slack.com

Browser / Version: Firefox 112.0
Operating System: Linux
Tested Another Browser: Yes Firefox

Problem type: Something else
Description: Huddles not available on Linux
Steps to Reproduce:
Slack allows Huddles in Firefox for Windows and Chrome for Linux, but not Firefox for Linux.

If you spoof the Firefox for Windows User-Agent, then huddles work just fine in Firefox for Linux.

Browser Configuration

• None

From webcompat.com with ❤️

[sv-calin]

Thank you for reporting this issue, I was able to reproduce it.

Tested on:
• Browser / Version: Firefox Nightly 114.0a1 (2023-04-25) / Firefox Release 112 / Chrome 112.0.5615.49
• Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Notes:

1. Reproducible on both Firefox Release and Nightly
2. Not reproducible on Chrome

Moving to Needsdiagnosis.

[qa_17/2023]

[tmccombs]

When I reported this in a ticket to Slack the response I got was that it was due to a problem with the AWS Chime SDK: aws/amazon-chime-sdk-js#2044

[nuxi]

Thats just them passing the buck. I'm the one who opened this ticket and they sent me that too. I pointed out that if there was actually a problem with the SDK then it would still be broken even if I spoofed a Windows user-agent. At one point they also tried to tell me that it didn't work on any Linux browser, but thats clearly untrue because they allow Chrome on Linux.

I gave up talking to them, my coworkers and I are just spoofing the useragent now. Would be nice if Mozilla added one of their webcompat overrides for this, but they don't seem interested.

[tmccombs]

Also, chime works fine on Firefox for linux. So it seems very odd that the sdk wouldn't work there.

[kevincox]

FWIW spoofing a Chromium user-agent via the dev tools allows joining calls but sharing screens is very broken. It works at first, but then within a second the screen share stops and it re-prompts for a screenshare. However even if I reselect a window/screen it doesn't work.

Running Firefox Wayland, GNOME Wayland on NixOS.

So it seems that at least some features are not working. Although it seems like they are mostly there. Even if screensharing is broken for some reason (which is shouldn't be because it works on Chime, Google Meet, Jitsi Meet, Zoom, ...) it would be nice to just disable that one feature rather than disable the whole thing.

[Kraust]

FWIW spoofing a Chromium user-agent via the dev tools allows joining calls but sharing screens is very broken. It works at first, but then within a second the screen share stops and it re-prompts for a screenshare. However even if I reselect a window/screen it doesn't work.

Setting browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to 0 in your about:config (basically opens all popups in tabs) will allow you to select a screen multiple times, but you need to use the original window to select the screen. It does not sound like the issue is with any upstream vendors and that Slack is just resistant to adding Firefox on Linux support due to how they do their popup windows (other screen share apps like webex or teams don't have a similar UX flow).

[denschub]

I'm closing this as a duplicate of #82623. Despite what some people claim, "just spoof the UA" does not actually just work, and there are several things broken if we'd spoof as Chrome on Linux (note, for example, this comment).

We aren't going to ship a UA for Slack on Linux as we can't justify the negative side-effects here. This is unlikely to change in the future, unless we actually know that a UA override "just works" (and we test that occasionally).

I strongly recommend opening support tickets with Slack as opposed to opening tickets here.