Microsoft is ditching Electron for Teams(blog.devgenius.io)
blog.devgenius.io
Microsoft is ditching Electron for Teams
https://blog.devgenius.io/microsoft-is-finally-ditching-electron-9e081757f9db?gi=bd4952a2226a
25 comments
If you work in an enterprise environment where the microsoft domains are whitelisted, but cdn.office.net is not...you'll end up with a couple hundred requests per second because it keeps trying to refresh all emojis, folder icons and others in an endless loop.
I'm not kidding you. They DDoS themselves because the app apparently doesn't cache anything.
Oh, and don't try what happens when skype.com doesn't work. The whole app goes maniac then.
I'm not kidding you. They DDoS themselves because the app apparently doesn't cache anything.
Oh, and don't try what happens when skype.com doesn't work. The whole app goes maniac then.
cdn.office.net is fully, unrestrictedly accessible.
Also, I believe those re-authentications are actually ALL the app is doing in those moments.
It's not actually loading anything, not emojis, not notifications or anything else (all of the app still works normally) - it's just re-authenticating, re-authenticating, re-authenticating, re-authenticating... in the background (eating quite a bit of CPU and bandwidth in the process).
Also, I believe those re-authentications are actually ALL the app is doing in those moments.
It's not actually loading anything, not emojis, not notifications or anything else (all of the app still works normally) - it's just re-authenticating, re-authenticating, re-authenticating, re-authenticating... in the background (eating quite a bit of CPU and bandwidth in the process).
> domains are whitelisted
Why people still do that?
Why people still do that?
Microsoft doesn’t publish an accurate list of IP ranges, and pushes many things to Akamai, so you need to whitelist a few dozen domains.
When I ran a very large O365 environment, it was even harder as we had a dedicated 10Gb circuit to Microsofts network, and and depending on various bugs, conditions, etc, you could easily send traffic to the wrong place and impact performance. (For example, if you inspect TLS traffic, that latency will kill Outlook application performance)
When I ran a very large O365 environment, it was even harder as we had a dedicated 10Gb circuit to Microsofts network, and and depending on various bugs, conditions, etc, you could easily send traffic to the wrong place and impact performance. (For example, if you inspect TLS traffic, that latency will kill Outlook application performance)
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Oh god, this confirms what I've observed visually.
A few times I got into a weird auth bug scenario, where if a window popped up to auth, and I didn't get it right the first time, it would send me into an endless loop of popping out auth windows (while Teams shows me offline). Whether I succeed with auth in the subsequent windows or not, or even whether i just dismiss the window, it doesn't matter. They kept popping up almost instantly again, dragging away window focus from whatever other application window was in focus. Even closing Teams wouldn't help, only reboot would reliably resolve it (though given how few times I've observed it, I didn't bother looking deeper than that into it). And that was on macOS.
A few times I got into a weird auth bug scenario, where if a window popped up to auth, and I didn't get it right the first time, it would send me into an endless loop of popping out auth windows (while Teams shows me offline). Whether I succeed with auth in the subsequent windows or not, or even whether i just dismiss the window, it doesn't matter. They kept popping up almost instantly again, dragging away window focus from whatever other application window was in focus. Even closing Teams wouldn't help, only reboot would reliably resolve it (though given how few times I've observed it, I didn't bother looking deeper than that into it). And that was on macOS.
I have the same issue with the android client. Sometimes it just keeps refreshing forever. Nothing less than a reboot of the phone works.
Microsoft just has no idea how to do auth well. Many of their online web properties follow these tortured redirect chains for authentication. I just cannot even count the number of times I've ended up in some horked state while trying to view something on O365 like email quarantine. I'm not surprised to hear that their apps are generating auth storms.
My theory is that they are torturing you to give up and use Azure AD.
The other big issue is that they saddled with the technical debt of legacy auth, and many failure scenarios lead to that path, which really sucks.
The other big issue is that they saddled with the technical debt of legacy auth, and many failure scenarios lead to that path, which really sucks.
It could be refreshing tokens before every API request in an attempt to avoid 1. API request, 2. 401. 3. refresh token 4. redo request? Not that that makes any sense, msal.js will refresh cached tokens before they time out.
Seems unlikely.
It usually works fine for an hour or two after restarting the app - and then it suddenly starts refreshing endlessly as fast as it can.
There's no visible reason why it would suddenly be doing so many API requests, and wasn't doing them before. (And then stops doing them again, after being restarted.)
It usually works fine for an hour or two after restarting the app - and then it suddenly starts refreshing endlessly as fast as it can.
There's no visible reason why it would suddenly be doing so many API requests, and wasn't doing them before. (And then stops doing them again, after being restarted.)
Problem: Product was created with the modern idea that optimization=evil.
Solution: Rewrite product, using essentially the same architecture (Chrome renderer wrapped in native exe)
We'll end up with similar levels of performance, but an entirely new host of exciting bugs
Solution: Rewrite product, using essentially the same architecture (Chrome renderer wrapped in native exe)
We'll end up with similar levels of performance, but an entirely new host of exciting bugs
> optimization=evil
Is that really why people turn to electron though? I'm pretty sure its not.
Is that really why people turn to electron though? I'm pretty sure its not.
The main problem with Teams isn't Electron. The Chrome renderer is state-of-the art and V8 is an excellent JS runtime.
The problem is writing code for code reviews, not for users. You can't add a performance-aware architecture as an afterthought, and it's really hard to fix your code with a profiler if every single operation is slower than necessary.
On a very general level, modern development often encourages "elegance" as in "code looks nice". Small things like looping through an array by creating an anonymous lambda function, creating an array-looping promise using that lambda, etc. What used to be one int, one comparison and one increment, is now fifteen objects created, seven levels of indirection and at least a few library calls.
This gets you software that manages to not keep up with my typing speed on a multi-gigahertz processor. It's not any single line of code that's hogging the cycles, and it's not fixable by changing the runtime from one Chrome variant to another.
The code looks much nicer though, I'm not denying that.
The problem is writing code for code reviews, not for users. You can't add a performance-aware architecture as an afterthought, and it's really hard to fix your code with a profiler if every single operation is slower than necessary.
On a very general level, modern development often encourages "elegance" as in "code looks nice". Small things like looping through an array by creating an anonymous lambda function, creating an array-looping promise using that lambda, etc. What used to be one int, one comparison and one increment, is now fifteen objects created, seven levels of indirection and at least a few library calls.
This gets you software that manages to not keep up with my typing speed on a multi-gigahertz processor. It's not any single line of code that's hogging the cycles, and it's not fixable by changing the runtime from one Chrome variant to another.
The code looks much nicer though, I'm not denying that.
>What used to be one int, one comparison and one increment, is now fifteen objects created, seven levels of indirection and at least a few library calls.
This sounds like the 90s-2000s enterprise OOP GoF pattern nightmares. I'm not sure lambdas are at fault here, since most languages can efficiently handle those. To me the not too crazy functional programming resurgence is actually relief from these object hierarchies distributed over many files which the computer and I don't like. Of course the architecture astronauts are still out and about talking about adding levels of indirection we can't even imagine yet
This sounds like the 90s-2000s enterprise OOP GoF pattern nightmares. I'm not sure lambdas are at fault here, since most languages can efficiently handle those. To me the not too crazy functional programming resurgence is actually relief from these object hierarchies distributed over many files which the computer and I don't like. Of course the architecture astronauts are still out and about talking about adding levels of indirection we can't even imagine yet
> V8 is an excellent JS runtime
Doesn't Electron use two instances of it though, one for Node.js and one for the browser UI, with some sort of message-passing inbetween? That would tend to slow things down.
Doesn't Electron use two instances of it though, one for Node.js and one for the browser UI, with some sort of message-passing inbetween? That would tend to slow things down.
It may not be the reason but it sure is used as a justification.
This seems very weird to me that microsoft, the very company that showed how performant an optimized electron app(vscode) can be, is shitfing another application because of performance issues. My guess would be that vscode does a lot more than teams. And given that they are shifting to webviews which would be running on chromium so how would that help? Am I missing something? Is teams more complex than vscode?
The Office org and DevDiv (Visual Studio) orgs in Microsoft are worlds apart with little communication between them at that level. (Why do you think Office still lives and breathes VB6-era VBA?)
> (Why do you think Office still lives and breathes VB6-era VBA?)
It still supports vba because their customers won't allow them to kill it, not because they haven't tried to replace it (e.g. JavaScript has been the recommended way to make extensions for a while).
It still supports vba because their customers won't allow them to kill it, not because they haven't tried to replace it (e.g. JavaScript has been the recommended way to make extensions for a while).
The JS API/environment was for “apps” that load in side-bar panes in Office 365’ desktop and web titles - it didn’t have access to the same COM automation API that VBA uses, let alone things like the local file system, registry (God-forbid), local network, etc.
The story is a bit of a mess, but VBA is still the only way to use the COM API and access local system resources: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/resource...
The story is a bit of a mess, but VBA is still the only way to use the COM API and access local system resources: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/resource...
> The JS API/environment was for “apps” that load in side-bar panes in Office 365’ desktop and web titles - it didn’t have access to the same COM automation API that VBA uses, let alone things like the local file system, registry (God-forbid), local network, etc.
They don't allow unsecured access the local system, thankfully, but Javascript add-ins are basically equivalent to the actual Excel COM API. You're linking to an "office scripts" page which is for a more recent macro-recorder like functionality, but the actual javascript api (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/javascript/api/excel?view=e...) is fairly complete and basically equivalent to the Excel COM API that you would use through VBA. It is also not limited to sidebars.
They don't allow unsecured access the local system, thankfully, but Javascript add-ins are basically equivalent to the actual Excel COM API. You're linking to an "office scripts" page which is for a more recent macro-recorder like functionality, but the actual javascript api (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/javascript/api/excel?view=e...) is fairly complete and basically equivalent to the Excel COM API that you would use through VBA. It is also not limited to sidebars.
Huh - weird. I have seen references to this before but when I was writing my earlier reply I tried to find it but couldn't.
But thanks!
But thanks!
Even weirder than that, Microsoft is the maintainer of React Native for Windows and macOS. Why do none of Microsoft's other DevTools teams seem to know this?
I keep hoping they’ll use this for teams. The mobile app is so much more performant (not sure if that’s react native?) and RN for desktop works well but needs more features
Teams is a rewrap of Outlook Groups, SharePoint, whatever the chat is, online meetings and phone bolted together.
It’s amazing that it works at all, but I think it’s unfair to blame the client, which does a decent job at making a semi-coherent product. It’s issues are really about design.
It’s amazing that it works at all, but I think it’s unfair to blame the client, which does a decent job at making a semi-coherent product. It’s issues are really about design.
As a casual Teams user I can say it's crap software, I don't understand why so many companies choose to use it.
Its poorly written software that is riddled with bugs.
Its also the best new piece of big software out there. In the days before teams, remote working together in an entire company was hell. Either you were on skype for business, or each team had their own thing that was different and not official.
With teams, everyone is on there. The other microsoft things are integrated, not seamlessly because of bugs, but easily good enough for most things. The chat is available and used, and a nice alternative to e-mail for smaller things.
Teams works well enough for most people, and is very easy to get started with. So most people actually use it, and you get a network effect.
Its also the best new piece of big software out there. In the days before teams, remote working together in an entire company was hell. Either you were on skype for business, or each team had their own thing that was different and not official.
With teams, everyone is on there. The other microsoft things are integrated, not seamlessly because of bugs, but easily good enough for most things. The chat is available and used, and a nice alternative to e-mail for smaller things.
Teams works well enough for most people, and is very easy to get started with. So most people actually use it, and you get a network effect.
Discord > rest of the market
There is no way the company I work at could switch to discord.
Besides licensing, there is:
- account setup - sharepoint integration - 'gamer' reputation - (I think) no on-prem solution to keep things off external servers - ease of sending an outlook invite (from native outlook) that immediately comes with a video meeting link.
Teams is a pile of bad software development practices. But it has the correct features to actually be adopted by enterprise. Sadly a large part of those features come from microsoft lock-in and are very hard for competitors to match.
- account setup - sharepoint integration - 'gamer' reputation - (I think) no on-prem solution to keep things off external servers - ease of sending an outlook invite (from native outlook) that immediately comes with a video meeting link.
Teams is a pile of bad software development practices. But it has the correct features to actually be adopted by enterprise. Sadly a large part of those features come from microsoft lock-in and are very hard for competitors to match.
I completely agree. What my employer had before introducing Teams was worse. I was relieved when its calendar integration allowed me to skip using the pile of shit Outlook is (on Windows; web app, iOS app and new macOS app are relatively fine!).
What I found quite notable about Teams is that for all its flaws and issues, the core functionality is very, very solid! Calls never drop, noise suppression is quite good, it’s slow but rarely freezes/crashes etc.
They know very well what would actually disqualify them with people who decide over its usage.
They must have some (in this area very good) project management philosophy the other teams don’t have, as I haven’t seen such a focus on core functionality in any other Microsoft product - bugs in other apps vary randomly in severity, often enough losing you a lot of time or data.
What I found quite notable about Teams is that for all its flaws and issues, the core functionality is very, very solid! Calls never drop, noise suppression is quite good, it’s slow but rarely freezes/crashes etc.
They know very well what would actually disqualify them with people who decide over its usage.
They must have some (in this area very good) project management philosophy the other teams don’t have, as I haven’t seen such a focus on core functionality in any other Microsoft product - bugs in other apps vary randomly in severity, often enough losing you a lot of time or data.
> What I found quite notable about Teams is that for all its flaws and issues, the core functionality is very, very solid! Calls never drop, noise suppression is quite good, it’s slow but rarely freezes/crashes etc.
That's funny, because it is exactly the opposite of my experience. Every day I have random issues with MS Teams: Call drops, microphone suddenly "does not work", which can be fixed by rejoining a call, so it cannot have been the microphone, noisy output from other call participants, cannot call anyone who is calling you at the same time, not showing that and not establishing a call when two individuals call each other, not showing any notification about anyone calling when being in a call already and the list probably goes on, as this is just what comes to mind right now.
> They know very well what would actually disqualify them with people who decide over its usage.
In my mind they are long disqualified and if I had a say, I would not even use it at all. So actually they do not seem to know what would disqualify them.
That's funny, because it is exactly the opposite of my experience. Every day I have random issues with MS Teams: Call drops, microphone suddenly "does not work", which can be fixed by rejoining a call, so it cannot have been the microphone, noisy output from other call participants, cannot call anyone who is calling you at the same time, not showing that and not establishing a call when two individuals call each other, not showing any notification about anyone calling when being in a call already and the list probably goes on, as this is just what comes to mind right now.
> They know very well what would actually disqualify them with people who decide over its usage.
In my mind they are long disqualified and if I had a say, I would not even use it at all. So actually they do not seem to know what would disqualify them.
Functionally yes, but they don't have the features needed for business clientele. Even their payment scheme is very unorthodox.
Because it comes bundled with Office 365 which they pay for, so it's "free". According to Slack, that's a company unfairly exploiting their monopoly ( on business productivity tools) and i agree.
If that was the case, more companies would use Google chat but I've yet to find a single one that does. I know multiple orgs that made a conscious decision to use teams though. There are lots of people who use and enjoy Microsoft products.
> Because it comes bundled with Office 365 which they pay for, so it's "free"
There is an official deb package for Ubuntu. I installed it without paying for Office 365. Never actually used it so far though. Will it ask me to pay when I try to?
There is an official deb package for Ubuntu. I installed it without paying for Office 365. Never actually used it so far though. Will it ask me to pay when I try to?
I don't agree with the monopoly notion. But Teams still sucks so much. Slacks can be really expensive for a small or medium sized company though.
Slack is just IRC in a javascript client. If they bothered to offer more than that they might be a competitor, but they didn't so they're not.
I've never used Teams - what does it do that Slack is missing.
p.s. IMHO Slack integrations is the worst thing ever - usually abused to death and never remotely useful.
p.s. IMHO Slack integrations is the worst thing ever - usually abused to death and never remotely useful.
Consumes CPU and GPU which in turn let you get a new laptop in your company
It's not. It actually used to be but they dropped the IRC back end around 2013 or 2014. Now it's just a noise generator with bots, emojis and forceful feature creep.
Most only use it because they're already paying for Office 365 and it costs no extra.
Not just the license costs, but also the license itself. The Office license is a known quantity, whereas alternatives would require a new license review. Especially important for companies that are worried about their data, for competitive or legal reasons.
That, and the fact that you don't need to manage yet another account for your users (EDIT: as a system admin)
You can pay Okta to do that for you. If my org wasn't on the brink of collapse, that's what we'd do. Sadly, I had to cancel the negotiations because we're in a death spiral of incompetent leadership.
>it's crap software
That's a massive understatement. I'd go as far and say that even if people would try to design a worse chat (and calls) application they'd fail spectacularly.
That's a massive understatement. I'd go as far and say that even if people would try to design a worse chat (and calls) application they'd fail spectacularly.
Lync/Skype for Business was way worse than teams.
I don't know about that. The thing (lync) at least could scroll.
We happily switched from Lync to Microsoft Teams. With Lync it was common to have dropped messages. When messaging between Macs and Windows it was especially bad.
It could not effectively save chat logs. The thing ate up megabytes of xml for hello world.
> I don't understand why so many companies choose to use it.
Because it's a) "free" and b) comes with the right enterprise security/isolation features by default. (For example, there's really no such thing as a "corporate Telegram account".)
Because it's a) "free" and b) comes with the right enterprise security/isolation features by default. (For example, there's really no such thing as a "corporate Telegram account".)
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Because it's better than Lync, so it was an easy and obvious transition.
As far as Europe is concerned, it's a cheap way to check ridiculous GDPR compliance boxes. I'm not convinced it's any more secure than literally any other instant messenger around, but you can rest assured Microsoft has their papers in order.
Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft: chapter N+1.
Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft: chapter N+1.
You don't buy it separately, but if you have Office 365 already, it's "free".
If you're already paying them money, it's just there and is somewhat integrated with the rest of the apps, but I doubt there's a lot of orgs out there purchasing Office 365 specifically because of Teams.
If you're already paying them money, it's just there and is somewhat integrated with the rest of the apps, but I doubt there's a lot of orgs out there purchasing Office 365 specifically because of Teams.
because it comes with the rest of the suite and it is LOADS better than Skype For Business.
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Coincidentally only yesterday I got into an argument with a clueless manager about Teams being shitty.
Man do I hate that guy. He is a thick as dogshit and about as capable at making a decision as one too. 5 minutes before that Teams conversation I had to explain the difference between a satellite and a ground station. Man is that guy stupid.
Man do I hate that guy. He is a thick as dogshit and about as capable at making a decision as one too. 5 minutes before that Teams conversation I had to explain the difference between a satellite and a ground station. Man is that guy stupid.
That or people who have had to deal with worse things such as the old IBM Lotus Mail have a higher threshold of pain. I remember telling myself if I ever get back on exchange I won't complain too much anymore.
Exactly what I was thinking while scrolling through comments - These people have not used IBM tools
I’ve used worse tools. I’ve also used better tools. I’ve had a pretty long career in IT and in that time I’ve learned that comparing ones tooling (or even just software in general) against the worst in the industry only leads one to repeated settle for terrible. What we should be doing is striving to do better. And in fact those who do say “fuck this shit, we can do better” are those more likely to disrupt their specific fields.
So no, I don’t buy that people who’ve used worse are more likely to put up. It’s jaded people who have lost interest in technology who are the ones who settle. The rest of us keep on pushing for something better.
So no, I don’t buy that people who’ve used worse are more likely to put up. It’s jaded people who have lost interest in technology who are the ones who settle. The rest of us keep on pushing for something better.
I’d love it if he were that experienced. Then he might actually be good for something :D
> Behind its ultra-modern, fluid user interface of ocean blue and pearl white widgets
I sometimes feel there must be a secret, second version of Teams that is not a steaming pile of shit with bland UI, idiotic text input, copy&paste behaviour and non-functional activity detection. If one has used Slack before, Teams feels like a sad joke. The video calling is pretty good though.
I sometimes feel there must be a secret, second version of Teams that is not a steaming pile of shit with bland UI, idiotic text input, copy&paste behaviour and non-functional activity detection. If one has used Slack before, Teams feels like a sad joke. The video calling is pretty good though.
I can't understand why there are no tabs of any kind. Need to find a file in some other chat or channel and get back to where you were? Leave, find file, come back, post. Why?
And why can I search for chat logs and only find the exact line I searched for, but not the context it was posted in?
I have never used Slack professionally, and Teams did make my life easier when it came to not sending E-mail all the time or having all types of editors and programs there for us to work collaboratively, but the interface, memory hogging, slow loading, no progress bars for downloading (no download management at all! Click on a huge file by accident? It's getting downloaded, no way to stop it!). Have I clicked a button or not? No way of knowing until the thing loads, and that sometimes takes a second.
And why can I search for chat logs and only find the exact line I searched for, but not the context it was posted in?
I have never used Slack professionally, and Teams did make my life easier when it came to not sending E-mail all the time or having all types of editors and programs there for us to work collaboratively, but the interface, memory hogging, slow loading, no progress bars for downloading (no download management at all! Click on a huge file by accident? It's getting downloaded, no way to stop it!). Have I clicked a button or not? No way of knowing until the thing loads, and that sometimes takes a second.
Microsoft never puts tabs in their UIs. Examples: Entire Office suite, Explorer (which still has no tabs, even in Windows 11) or literally anything except the web browser, which has tabs because Opera.
They do have tabs in the office suite, for the toolbars. And there are those annoying settings windows where the tab rows swap places when you switch tab.
These aren't tabs in the sense GP means, because they don't allow you to do something with multiple documents or such.
Yes, Microsoft GUIs are riddled with tabs of the other kind.
Yes, Microsoft GUIs are riddled with tabs of the other kind.
Visual Studio (Code) have tabs as far as my hazy memory reaches back.
Onenote.
If one has used a computer before, Teams feels like a sad joke. It's like none of the developers grew up in the 90s or even the 00s with a computer. I can't think of a single piece of software I used in that time frame which behaved as terribly as Teams.
It's bizarre that an OS developer can't follow its own standards. Of all the companies to not support native Windows UI elements, why is it Microsoft?
Microsoft has never followed its own standards. They came out with the flat toolbar and 3D menu bar, neither of which were a published Windows API. Then when everyone started emulating that with their own, often poorly implemented, APIs Microsoft came out with the ribbon bar.
The standard reply to that question is "Microsfot is a big company and each team is in control of which frameworks they want to use".
Yeah I get your point, and think about it every time I start an Electron based installer to customise Visual Studio installation.
Yeah I get your point, and think about it every time I start an Electron based installer to customise Visual Studio installation.
If you are unlucky enough to be in multiple Teams , it is totally unusable as you need to log in as you switch. Slack just has them listed as "supertabs", null sweat, constantly logged in.
I have been using https://github.com/TonCunha/multi-microsoft-teams for this and it works quite well.
Oh that looks great. I knew buying one of the most powerful laptops with a Tiger Lake H CPU and upgrading it with 64GB RAM will come handy one day I just didn't expect that day to come so soon.
I don't like the tone of the headline demonizing Electron. I think if you flip it you have the incredible headline of "Electron allowed Microsoft to grow to 250M users for Teams", which paints the IMHO correct light into how Electron has played the role of growing Teams from 0 to where it is now. And only now that it has proven tremendous success, and to extract more of juice on performance for lower-end devices, it's being switched to a custom-built engine by investing massive resources into it. So Electron has served its purpose greatly in here IMHO.
Most of those users are forced to use it because of company policy, not by choice.
I have problems with the Teams Android app, i have issues with Teams in Firefox, i have issues with the Teams desktop app, i have issues with Teams inside Citrix. Its just crappy experience altogether. I tell colleagues to write an email, if they want to reach me reliably.
I have problems with the Teams Android app, i have issues with Teams in Firefox, i have issues with the Teams desktop app, i have issues with Teams inside Citrix. Its just crappy experience altogether. I tell colleagues to write an email, if they want to reach me reliably.
That's basically the last paragraph of the article.
For me, on the native Mac app, Teams works relatively ok in the beginning, but starts using more and more CPU and after a few minutes the whole computer becomes sluggish. There is some kind of a bug that resource usage grows over time. This has appeared a year or two ago. It's related to video decoding or encoding. I assume not many people use Macs at Microsoft or Teams at Apple?
Yesterday a colleague was trying to screenshare via teams for mac to another colleague (also on a mac) and somehow both their machines crashed. While it could be a coincidence, I suspect it was the teams app. The app is a dumpster fire right now, even though I use it to some of degree of success myself
There is no 'native' Mac app. Also everyone I've worked with at MS uses Teams in the browser. So I suspect not many at MS even use the desktop app.
Uhm... I really wonder why
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As a fellow mac teams user, I feel you. Switching conversations takes a noticeable ~1s lag. Or basically clicking or scrolling anywhere, for that matter.
1s? You're lucky.
What I hate most about Teams, is that it is web technology wrapped inside a pointless app. If I try to use Teams via the website, it constantly annoys me with "install the app bla-bla". It's the same experience you get with the reddit/twitter websites on a cell phone; constant nagging to get me to use the app to view the exact same content.
I was on a team this summer that used Teams, and although many people there lamented their loss of Slack, I didn't think there was a big deal. In fact, I was surprised how well Teams was performing, considering the last time I used it it was a pig.
Then I hopped in to Task Manager, and it turned out my issued laptop had 64GB of RAM. Well, that explains that.
Then I hopped in to Task Manager, and it turned out my issued laptop had 64GB of RAM. Well, that explains that.
- Wait, why do you require a high-end gaming laptop with 64GB of RAM, 8 core CPU and the latest NVIDIA graphics card? Is this for private gaming?
- No, just chatting in Teams.
- No, just chatting in Teams.
I genuinely don't care, I gave up on the desktop app in favour of the web app a long time ago.
The one thing that drives me crazy is that even Google has took its time to make Meet work well in Firefox, while Microsoft can't be bothered to do the same. The same with Skype Web, where you have to bypass its browser check in order to use it on Firefox.
The one thing that drives me crazy is that even Google has took its time to make Meet work well in Firefox, while Microsoft can't be bothered to do the same. The same with Skype Web, where you have to bypass its browser check in order to use it on Firefox.
I actually curious as to why Teams uses Electron at all. Microsoft is after all telling .NET users that MAUI is the future of .NET UI API's (I'm not convinced). Teams is hardly a complex UI, I would thought this would have been a great opportunity to dogfood their own tools? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's "Fire and motion": https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
Perhaps because they can use the same codebase to power the web client (in one's browser) and the desktop/mobile clients.
This is a very poorly written article. To save you some time:
Yes, they're getting rid of Electron. No, they aren't going native. Yes, they're doing what Qt and Gtk+ and Microsoft have already been doing for years and just using the toolkit's built-in ability to embed a web browser into a native frame. Yes, this is pretty much just what they were doing during XP but with a more bloated web browser.
Yes, they're getting rid of Electron. No, they aren't going native. Yes, they're doing what Qt and Gtk+ and Microsoft have already been doing for years and just using the toolkit's built-in ability to embed a web browser into a native frame. Yes, this is pretty much just what they were doing during XP but with a more bloated web browser.
Quotes from the article
> Since a unique instance of Chrome OS runs in the backend of every Electron app
After using Electron I wouldn't be surprised.
> As a result, Teams would essentially become close to a native Windows app.
Hacker News is native because I'm running it within my native browser.
> Since a unique instance of Chrome OS runs in the backend of every Electron app
After using Electron I wouldn't be surprised.
> As a result, Teams would essentially become close to a native Windows app.
Hacker News is native because I'm running it within my native browser.
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How was MS able to achieve awesome performance in VScode but the performance in Teams is not acceptable? Is there a difference in performance expectations? (I don't use teams so I don't know how slow it is, especially on the low end). Is it something related to the types of apps they are? Or could it just be the difference teams?
This is a new thing and it's what powers "Teams for Life" on Microsoft Windows 11 (which is already available, btw).
Sadly, the work version of Microsoft Teams is here to stay, with its power hungry Electron and all of the badly implemented functions that we (users) have been complaining since forever.
Sadly, the work version of Microsoft Teams is here to stay, with its power hungry Electron and all of the badly implemented functions that we (users) have been complaining since forever.
Teams for Business (from the creators of Skype for Business) will be coming next year with WebView2 (I can't find a source for it, but it was in one of the blog posts explaining why there are now two Teams clients).
I believe it's this blog post: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...
I'm so confused by teams 2. I thought teams 2 was the conversion from angular + react to react only?
+ Edge Webview + Non company accounts only
Why big companies gave up developing native applications will never understand, is it that hard developing them any more? probably not, it’s just easier to deliver crap software continuously bundled with apps like Electron cheap.
IMHO, since the slow deprecation of windows forms and no one knows which flavor of new windows UI they should use, it makes nearly 0 sense to build a native windows UI.
Getting something to display is not hard, but getting full Unicode support, font support, high-DPI support, accessibility, translation, fluid layouts, auto-completion, table rendering, dark mode, cross-platform, including mobile, while not looking like something from 2000 is a massive undertaking, and you often end up re-inventing the web browser doing it. Then if you need a diagram or graph rendered, you need to write it yourself or accept 3rd party library with poor style choices, where there are many great packages for the web. Any if your widget library falls short (and it will), you need a native developer to make a kludge.
People who know how to write native apps are some sort of super human geniuses compared to the JavaScript wielding kiddies. they have all been promoted to management.
Teams on Linux is a massive pile of shit. It's definitely a second class citizen as far as development and is missing heaps of features the other versions have.
"It is marketed that Teams would consume 2x less memory as a result of the transition." Not sure if that's the article or the statement from Microsoft, but what does 2x less memory even mean? Half the memory? Quarter? If so, why not just say that?
Teams uses M memory. 2xM is 2M. 2M less than M is -M. Seems pretty clear to me.
Oh wait. Total system memory is S. Teams uses M, which can also be expressed as -(S-M) relative to S. So new teams uses -2(S-M) relative to S.
E.g. if Teams used to use 95% of your system, now it uses only 90%.
E.g. if Teams used to use 95% of your system, now it uses only 90%.
So it will be using negative memory?
Yeah. It'll just download more RAM for you.
It will give you memory in return for using teams.
I think 2x less is meant to be read as 'decreased by a factor of 2'. The less indicating that the factor is shrinkage instead of growth.
Technically 2x less could be the opposite of 2x more, and technically 2x more means 3 times as much. Really what I think this shows is that it is much nicer to talk about factors than it is to talk about relative in/de-creases.
Technically 2x less could be the opposite of 2x more, and technically 2x more means 3 times as much. Really what I think this shows is that it is much nicer to talk about factors than it is to talk about relative in/de-creases.
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"2x less" - "two times less" is word by word translation to English from some other language. As non native English speaker I didn't notice at first that there could be something wrong with this sentence.
As any fule kno, x is an unknown variable. 2x is twice that. QED
How about Linux and Mac versions of Teams? Will they remain on Electron or die altogether?
Used Teams because a company I contracted for heavily used it internally.
I would pay not to use it.
Their 'native' apps don't even try to integrate with the OS - so you get custom notifications and stuff.
The UI also is super laggy and slow.
I would pay not to use it.
Their 'native' apps don't even try to integrate with the OS - so you get custom notifications and stuff.
The UI also is super laggy and slow.
Teams isn't great, Electron Apps in general aren't. But why can't the Google team just make Chrome/Chromium less shit?
As a someone who worked on Chromium, I think it is a gigantic pile of s̶h̶i̶t̶ complexity.
On my laptop, I made it somehow "cheaper" to run Teams by running it in a virtual machine with limited resources. I lost video calling but I just tell them "Teams is unstable on my laptop" and nobody ever questioned this in the last 12 months.
Is it that hard for Microsoft to hire a proper (native) desktop dev team(s)?
Yeah I really hope ms will finally have clear path on their native apps.
You can like or dislike Apple but it's really nice that you know that they will support swift with swiftui as the main thing for native development on their platforms for at least couple years.
MS has so many tools for the apps that I am not even sure which one to use when I want to write a light modern native app for their platform.
Didn't Webview1 use Internet Explorer, not Edge as its rendering engine?
They should hire Discord devs to do the app dev.
So they're not actually doing anything with the pile of garbage webviews they base their chat on? Darn. It'd be nice to export conversations to text files from the client side, or at least be able to, ya know, RELIABLY COPY AND PASTE MORE THAN 1 MESSAGE AT A TIME.
And then heaven forbid I need to scroll more than a little bit.
This doesn't sound like it solves ANY of that. They just changed the rendering engine. Whoopdeefuckingdoo.
And then heaven forbid I need to scroll more than a little bit.
This doesn't sound like it solves ANY of that. They just changed the rendering engine. Whoopdeefuckingdoo.
Does it even change the rendering engine? Rather changing to another flavor of same engine.
Chrome is pretty resource heavy and Teams might not need all of that. Eg It might not need the latest web APIs or even v8 at all. While it seems counterintuitive, I have read quite a few success stories of people moving from Electron to Qt Webviews. Obviously fully native would be preferable from a user experience but at least with a webview you can start to build hot paths in C++/Rust/etc more easily than one might be able to with Electron. So this might not solve all of Teams desktop application problems it’s still a step in the right direction.
I was thinking the same thing - why does teams need multiprocess / electrolysis to use a Firefox terminology...
and the rendering engine is still based on chromium underneath ...
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I only figured it out by accident - through the Microsoft Authenticator App I got to a login/authentication history somewhere, and there I saw that Teams was automatically re-authenticating itself in the background. Probably some sort of token renewal or something.
But it was doing that LOTS. Like 2 or 3 times per SECOND. And once it starts doing that, it seems to be doing that indefinitely (until you restart the app) - with absolutely no hint of what's happening inside the app.