Tell HN: MS Teams on Linux with Firefox is pain
- copying & pasting: why does it hijack the information that is before me trying to be smart and doing whatever-it-is breaking the content that I intended to copy and paste into another chat? For instance: copy a whole message, it usually transforms it into broken pieces of text trying (I'm guessing) to put the name of the author and the time of the message before the content;
- screen sharing: sometimes it works and other times just a black screen;
- "the message is too long": then please, tell when I've reached the limit before a click on "submit" and waste my time;
- content formatting: CTRL + b -> bold, write text, CTRL + b -> finish bold, write word, wrong word?, clear word (preserving previous space), start writing -> bold text...;
- "busy": you go AFK because you are working in another window/virtual desktop, so you give people a bad impression if you are not actually reading anything at the moment;
- content shift: classic "open menu and load later", makes me (and fellow colleagues) pin messages almost every time, or click the wrong intended action in general;
- 1:1 call and meeting parity: what's holding 1:1 calls from Firefox? And why is it not possible to use "reactions" in it?;
- hijack nightmare: browser/system context menu? Too bad! shortcut keys? Tough luck. You have to disable DOM events for the page;
I've reported a total of 5 bugs/issues/requests in their "user voice" (I think it's called feedback portal now), just 1 of them was fixed (because it was a major issue that others also complained) and the others have 2 years(!) of existence (and there many more from other users and for a longer time!).
I realized it was futile to try and resist Chromium, so I install any browser that I feel like using at the moment (Vivaldi, Brave, etc) just to use Teams —refusing to use Edge. I've used it in the beginning, liked it, but eventually it became a spyware bloat and useless features that I had to go my way to disable instead of opting in. At the moment I use "teams-for-linux" when absolute necessary.
They killed their official application for Linux (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32678839) probably with the expectation that Linux users would succumb to their Web Browser.
And do not get me started with their mobile app nor with their dread login redirects that sometimes hangs and you have to click "Refresh" button and fucks up you browser's "back button"...
I'm at loss how is it possible that a company this big can (and will) deliver a product this botched (even if using their browser).
I also don't know if Firefox also shares some fault, in regards of feature parity with Chromium.
I'm glad they changed from "User Voice" to "Feedback portal", it fits way better.