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Comment by andmarios | Hacker News Reader

WebEx is the worst conferencing software I've used. Their Linux support is worst than non-existant. If it were non-existant that would be it, life could go on. But no, they provide a java applet that runs only from firefox, that it's impossible to use audio because they are still at 32bit, that claims to share one application and instead shares your whole screen (and only if you are lucky and someone tells you, you'll ever know), that occasionally (like one hour before an important meeting) they release a version with bad manifests and the applet refuses to download its components.

Even their Android client can't manage the mic volume properly and people can't hear you.

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I was asked to join a call yesterday using appear.in[1]. Having never used this service before, I feared the worst and accessed the invitation link a good 20 minutes before the call was due to start.

Using Chromium on Debian, everything worked absolutely smoothly. No further install requested. Audio quality was great. My video picture looked a bit grainy to me, but the other participant appeared very clear on my end.

They're using WebRTC[2], which excludes Explorer and Safari, but covers recent versions of just about everything else.

After poor experiences using Skype, Webex and Hangouts, I was very pleasantly surprised by appear.in

[1] https://appear.in

[2] http://support.appear.in/article/94-who-can-use-appear-in

WebEx is not the worst but definitely among those which are considered the worst;-)

Currently my company uses Hangouts, BlueJeans, Zoom, and WebEx - don't know why there is no decision made.

In this context it is the worse - I tried to run it on Linux, like you said now that chrome support is gone, I can only launch the Java (swing - not Java applet for sure) UI via Firefox, end up with crappy slow GUI, no ability for screen sharing & viewing, no audio, utterly useless.

On Linux, web conferencing services that provide a lite (feature rich) version like BlueJeans and GoToMeeting (chrome extension and/or web version) are pleasant to use.

I personally prefer to use Hangouts if no such pure web version is available although Hangouts seems to have lost its gravity…

Their phone line support seems to be high quality though, other participants are more intelligible than Skype for business.

Tin cans and string are more intelligible than Lync, aka "Skype for Business". It's the worst thing I've ever used in this space, by an absurdly large degree.

I received a Lync / Skype for Business invitation (in G Suite - AKA Gmail) with no time and date, which a URL (custom domain for this company). Clicking on that link, dead link... (later on it was fixed but asked me to install add-on, did it in a Windows virtual machine, join meeting, meeting expired...)

Ridiculous experience, worst web conferencing service I have ever used (I consider it even worse than Oracle Beehive Conferencing - not many people know this). In contrast, WebEx is way better (phone dial-in quality is pretty good).

Oh gawd Beehive. Is it still alive? Why did Oracle ever think they should get into groupware???

I believe Oracle is still using Beehive Collaboration Suite https://stbeehive.oracle.com (conferencing as a part of the suite) internally, for email (thunderbird is the preferred client WoW), calendar (CalDAV) etc.

Beehive Conferencing used to be the default option for remote web conferencing (it actually has a better Linux version than WebEx). Beehive's predecessor, cannot even remember the name, use to be Windows ONLY and crashes attendees' Windows (BSOD) randomly (15-20%...) LoL

I have used virtually all commercial conferencing services and aside from the lack of linux support, have found webex to be by far the most stable solution that integrates voice from phone lines (far better quality than voice over ip), video and presentation. Blue Jeans comes close but has very limited countries with phone line support.

agreed. I prefer GoToMeeting whenever possible. I really want to be able to join via VoIP or at least get the system to call me back on my SIP phone (so I have my hands free and can write down notes).

WebEx just seems castrated, feature-wise.

Maybe down to your Webex platform version - at work, we can get a dialback (Cisco SIP phones on desk and softphones), connect via computer or dial in to toll-free or chargeable numbers.

For meetings that fall into my evening, I join conferences via a tablet and the Android App, and connect to audio through it so I can relax or move about the house.

yes, of course, it depends on the webex implementation. But whenever I get a client with webex, they seem to have all good features cut out - and I don't know why.

It's a Cisco product so licence, licence, licence, licence ??

WebEx is definitely among the best ones.

I remember the joy of using WebEx for the first time back in 2006, instead of Netmeeting or the other applications we had available to us.

I use Webex from Chrome every day (macOS). It works great. It's the best conferencing software I've used.

I didn't even know they had any kind of Linux support. Internally, Cisco only supports macOS and Windows on the desktop so it's no wonder the Linux support is bad. If you absolutely need to use Webex then clearly using desktop Linux is a bad idea.

How did they manage to make a Chrome extension that works on Mac but not Linux? Chrome extensions can't contain platform native code, and Chrome doesn't support other kinds of plugins anymore.

It's an "extension" that launches the client app.

Why do you need a extension for that? Wouldn't it be enough for the client app to register a custom URL scheme handler and their website using that custom URL scheme to open the client?

You can, but that results in a ton of UI where the user has to navigate between "allow" custom protocol and then selecting what applications are allowed to launch via this protocol.

Currently it's a maze of dialogs only technical people are able to navigate successfully. Expecting people already in need of support to manage to bypass this deliberate inconvenience is simply unrealistic.

The company I work for used to maintain a solution based on this approach. It worked well until browser-vendors started tightening up security.

After that we had to come up with a different solution all together, because almost no users managed to configure our integration successfully.

(And that rewrite was a lot of work, so I can see why Cisco/WebEx has been postponing it as much as possible)

Couldn't the also have a webx file extension and launch it that way? Or abuse copy/paste abilities? The former would allow easy desktop bookmarks as well.

They could even, god forbid, accept that it's not possible instead of coming up with "clever" ways to make it possible.

I don't know exactly what the extension does behind the scenes, but I use Webex daily for my job and almost all my clients suggest just using the temporary application to join is a better experience by far. The extension constantly fails to launch the application correctly and from what I'm told does some other non-sense that causes CPU spikes and connectivity issues.

It also doesn't inspire confidence that this is the screenshot of the Chrome Extension they give users to encourage them to use the extension: http://imgur.com/a/Rsy3H

(For those who don't want to click, the screenshot showing the install has the rating from the Chrome Webstore, which is currently at 2 stars)

I mean, I applaud the honesty of showing us what users have rated it, but it just seems kind of sloppy to me.

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