Ah, yeah, the flow for when the app isn’t installed makes particular sense (at least as a motivation for why someone would implement something so awful). Thanks!
> Zoom believes in giving our customers the power to choose how they want to Zoom.
Zoom believes if their app isn't convenient to use, their customers have the power to leave their ass, as they are in an incredibly competitive market.
> This includes whether they want a seamless experience in joining a meeting with microphone and video automatically enabled, or if they want to manually enable these input devices after joining a meeting.
This includes making sure that they aren't asked to provide confirmation to access their camera/microphone, which impedes the convenience of the app to all participants. Less clicks equals less thinking.
> Such configuration options are available in the Zoom Meeting client audio and video settings.
Stop complaining about this as we have given ourselves a legally compelling user defined control hidden in a single tab deep within our preferences.
> However, we also recognize the desire by some customers to have a confirmation dialog before joining a meeting.
We can tell you aren't going to drop this.
> Based on your recommendations and feature requests from other customers, the Zoomteam [sic] is evaluating options for such a feature, as well as additional account level controls over user input device settings. We will be sure to keep you informed of our plans in this regard.
We don't care. We have lots of users, and lots of success having this option turned on by default. The support costs alone telling non-technical people how to turn on their cameras don't make it worth it.
* When Zoom is already installed:
- should be able to handle most instances
- needs to account for version management, eg installed version zoom could still be version that is too old to process the uri correctly. Version could be in the uri.
When Zoom is not installed:
- an information dialog needs to be somehow shown to the receiving user, asking them if they want to install 'Zoom'.
- that screen must include the 'uri' and validate certificates etc to prevent abuse (hence must necessarily be 'ugly' and not 'seamless')
- the language on that dialog has to be provided by the OS/Browser, not the software vendor, to prevent abuse. For similar reasons the Windows UAC dialog text can't be written by the vendor.
- the language employed by the OS/Browser has to of necessity be fairly neutral, neither encouraging nor discouraging installation, to prevent abuse. This is necessarily at odds with the UI principle of leading the inexperienced user through clear steps to achieve their intended goal.
- the user of average-to-lower-quartile experience, as of 2019, for a product with a client base of 40 million+, is likely not in a position to meaningfully distinguish a legitimate Zoom install uri from a malicious / imposter one. Hence any popular software using this install-from-uri-handler becomes an appealing target for malicious actors to mimic, which they will.
- some proportion of users will likely install from malicious links, and whichever product (let's say Zoom for example) is the most likely software for malicious actors to masquerade as will become the name associated with the attack in the mind of the wounded public
Secondly, version checks assume that the user wants to run this specific protocol handler. I as the user might prefer to run an open source non-official zoom client. I think the OS should only be trying to help me if I don't have any handler.
If I'm understanding it correctly, the reason it does more than that is to bypass the "protocol-specific URI opening" UX.
If only there was some happy middle ground between never asking and always asking ...
I'd be totally fine with default-on voip sound - with a red, muted mic button and a bubble saying 'tap to unmute'.