such a discord
And their desktop client technically is a browser without omnibar.
But probably Chromium right? They probably didn’t make all Discord functions work for Firefox as that would require some extra work probably.
Electron is not just a browser. It’s more like a native app framework that just happens to use HTML and CSS to render UIs. You can do anything the OS lets you do, not just what a browser environment would let you do.
Electron is an unholy fusion of Chromium and Node.JS. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t ‘just happen’ to use HTML and CSS. It’s literally just a browser with most of the default browser UI being hidden. Something like React Native would better fit your definition.
It’s not literally just a browser. It’s literally just a web engine with a full set of OS calls hooked in. It is not a browser in the same way GNOME is not an OS. A browser comes with a whole lot more than a web engine, so calling it “a browser” is wrong both technically and colloquially.
I’m on my lunch break from working on a React Native codebase, and I wouldn’t say RN fits that definition at all… but I think we’re just getting lost in semantics.
My point was just that a web app running inside a browser has to abide by the rules and limitations set by the browser, whereas Electron flips that relationship – your app sets the rules and limitations of what can be done, and the web rendering process abides by whatever environment you create. You can do anything the OS permits. Even from inside a web context, if you want. You don’t need a browser-managed sandbox to mediate your interactions with the OS.
People use discord in the browser? Damn boi
Why would you want to block their telemetry?
It is not like they’re using it to serve ads to you, and it should be better for everyone for developers to make decisions based on how users are actually using their app, no?
It’s simple. Nothing that happens on my device is their data.
Any telemetry that isn’t explicitly opt in with zero consequence for not doing so should be the kind of illegal that gets every asset your company owns seized immediately for non-compliance. All user data collection is spyware.
The desktop client logs and sends lists of currently running processes by default, and they also collect usage data (which channels you open, how long for, who you’re interacting with). In the settings, there’s literally an option for “Use data to customize my Discord experience”. And sure, they don’t show ads, but their third-party integrations do. Article with sources
In the end, processing and storing millions of texts, images, videos and files permanently, and hosting all those live voice and video calls, and making updates to the clients, will always cost more than what they get from Nitro and server boosting. Discord isn’t profitable; they have to make the deficit up to shareholders somehow.
Invasions of privacy are bad per se, even if they don’t use them to serve ads
You kidding? That’s literally a troijan horse.
Imagine you buy a new showerhead and it came with a hidden camera sending data to the seller. The camera is enabled by default, with toggle hidden and difficult to find.
This is what it is when you enable telemetry by default.
Fair, but from a UX and technical perspective it’s a pain in the ass to use it like that
Yes as I manly use it on phone
So for the once on a blue moon when I’ll open discord on my PC, the browser is enough
It’s not a laptop. Not sure why that would matter though. The browser version works fine. If it didn’t, that wouldn’t be my pc’s fault, it would be discord’s.
It works better for me as an app. I don’t like my browsers to be cluttered like that. But if it fits your usecase
That’s why I like Chrome’s (and various Chromium browsers’) ability to app-ify sites. Will create a .app in MacOS, .desktop in Linux, etc. Launches as what looks like an independent app with its own dock/launcher icon. Utilizes most of their PWA stuff.
Sadly, it looks like Chrome has hidden the option completely in the latest version unless you set a flag that will probably go away in a few releases. Edge makes it pretty clear.
I wish Firefox would bring the feature back. They deprecated it years ago and I use it heavily (only reason/time I use Chromium stuff on most of my machines)
It works better only because they intentionally hamstring the browser so you’ll do exactly that.
I fail to understand how opening a web site, which is all a browser does, can be defined as ‘cluttered’, but my use case is security while appears yours is to let corpos rummage through your files.
Discord is a web app, there’s no other way. You either use your main browser or the one they’re bundling it with.
If it’s just a WebApp, then why does one of the commenters have issues to run it without the browser?
See: https://feddit.de/comment/2192027
Edit: And I know that you’re right technically, still there is a difference in how you run it when using a browser vs Webapp.
Theoretically, it may have additional features when it’s bundled with Electron, but ultimately there’s nothing wrong with running it in the browser.
There’s really no reason to be mad at them in this particular instance. Their client is Chromium-based (Electron) so they will optimize their new features for that engine first. There’s probably less than 5% users who Discord from browser, let alone Firefox, and I think I’m being generous with that number. Additionally, some things are harder to implement (or even impossible) in native web rather than Electron, that has all the NodeJS integrations.
File upload is not a chromium feature, it’s a super old basic feature. It’s just their pittiness and upcoming drm implications. I bet if you set your user-agent to chrome it woould work just fine.
This dialog doesn’t do just file upload, after you upload you can cut the sound file into a 4-second clip, inside the client. My bet is that it might technically be possible to do it in Firefox, but not with the same exact code as with chromium, and thus they decided they don’t care.
You’re probably right. A modern browser that supports webassembly can do literally anything, implementing the missing AudioData functionality should be possible with enough development effort, but it’s not important enough for them to make this particular feature works on Firefox.
I haven’t used soundboard yet, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t “just” an HTML5 file upload. Perhaps it’s as you said, they run checks on the file being uploaded. Maybe it will work, maybe it will crash in some use cases because they don’t have a polyfill for some specific API they use. So instead of dealing with user complaints about crashes they just disabled the feature.
I’m also not sure why you’re upset with Discord for implementing DRM for uploaded files. If they don’t, they will get sued by the companies enforcing that DRM, so hate on those companies instead.
Firefox doesn’t implement the AudioData API, which is probably necessary for the waveform viewer and cropping tool Discord presents in the soundboard management UI.
Not everything is about Chrome DRM yall.
Edited to add screenshot of spoofing user-agent on Firefox and getting an error:
https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/4edb0d24-0c2a-4610-b7b2-eed07a3c7d24.png
Here’s what happens when you spoof a Chrome user-agent.
https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/d3b96401-956b-4eab-bc5c-64b0743feae4.png
-kibiz0r@midwest.social
I said 'fuck you" to Slack for similar reasons. Going to same the same to Discord now.
They implemented a feature that is only available in Chromium and not part of the web standards yet. It’s no different than websites that would only work on IE 20 years ago because of some proprietary Microsoft thing.
Except it’s not proprietary, and presumably there’s no other way to do it in the browser, so did discord really have a choice other than not implementing said feature?
On top of that, their desktop app uses essentially the same website in an internal browser, so unless they handicap themselves by not implementing anything firefox can’t support, I still don’t see how it’s their fault
