You know what I want? I want the old linux client to work. It didn't have the stupid bubbly UI bloated with ads and "big, friendly buttons" it had functional utility, separate windows, and a much more pleasant user experience just by being unpretty.
As it is, I'm glad I have to use it less and less in favor of discord, which is by all accounts, far, far superior.
It's still primarily a "gaming" voicechat/messaging system, but the software is all there, it just needs expansion. I'd be surprised if some sort of enterprise-grade discord didn't come about.
I suspect they're hoping to get bought by someone like Twitch or Steam which have otherwise relatively rudimentary chat capabilities, but is squarely in the gaming space.
As a Silicon Valley startup with no viable business plan (charging for themes and chat emojis? at some point "in the future"?), I strongly suspect being acquihired is their exit plan.
I consider it a nuisance. I have a good window manager (i3). It can tab or stack windows however I please, and I can navigate through my tabs of windows with the same keybindings across my OS. When browsers decided to force tabs on everyone, suddenly the keyboard shortcuts that work everywhere else no longer work in the browser.
Same goes for various chat apps that don't open conversations or buddy lists in new windows. Even vim, as much as I like it, frustrates me I can't open views to a buffer in separate X windows, no I must split windows in vim.
Window management is a bolt on feature to these apps and none of them do it as well as the window manager I'm already running.
I wish Windows and OSX had implemented OS wide tabbed windows a long time ago, then maybe these application developers wouldn't have felt it necessary to add these features inside the apps.
A big thing (for me anyway) is that the overall interface becomes smaller, and allows for greater customization. I can set it up exactly how I want, and at what size, without messing about. Sure, you can do that in a single-panel application, but skype is never gonna do it. It's kind of like how photoshop is better with floating windows.
Got it about the customization. But while it has a benefit to you as a probable "power user", it has a cost: beginners don't get it. They don't understand why part of skype is in a windows while another lives in another. When widgets are dockable/undockable, they undock by mistake, lose the undocked widget in some unseen corner of their screen, are unable to reattach it, and get frustrated.
"All-in-one" UIs allow for less customizability/rearranging, but IMHO that's a trade-off they do for one huge benefit: simplicity.
With this in mind, how do developers decide which direction to push? By looking at their target user base, of course. And the target user base of Skype is not mostly savvy professionals who like to rearrange windows/widgets, it's humans wanting to talk to other humans. So Skype developers naturally push towards simplifying.
Other examples of applications who are kinda, in various ways, reducing such customizability:
- Office, with the Ribbon: no more detachable toolbars.
- All iOS / Android apps: single-screen, one thing focused at a time (with the exception of left/right tiling in recent iOSes)
- Even the GIMP introduced a Single Window mode in recent versions.
Now, why don't Skype developers let users pick whether to choose single or multi-window mode? (which they used to do in the Qt-based version under Windows, see the "View" menu).
- Because configurability means more code, more tests, more bugs, more money. So if only a tiny part of the userbase requires the configurability, product managers bring the hatchet.
- And again, options means beginners will accidentally change them to the one that doesn't fit them, won't understand what the hell happened and how to change it back, ending up either grudgingly accommodating to the undesired option, or getting frustrated and leaving.
Fair points- I largely don't have an issue with single-window interfaces, (see discord) but it kinda sucks to have your nice, multiwindow taken away and replaced with something much, much worse.
In case anyone's wondering, this is Electron using the WebRTC version of Skype. I wonder why they didn't just promote the WebRTC site instead. It would make it easier to have the latest security updates in the browser engine without waiting for Skype (Microsoft) to publish an update.
Personal guess: while functional (nit: only on Chrome for now :-/ ), the WebRTC site lacks some desktop features (integration, hotkeys, more control on notifications, etc) that they want to provide, and that are covered by the Electron API. For now there's none of it, but I think we'll see those appear little by little.
Not sure about hotkeys. Current Twitter and Github hijack enough well known bindings that it got annoying. So, what hotkeys would Electron allow that wouldn't work in a generic browser?
I meant global system-wide hotkeys that work even when the application is not focused, not JavaScript-event-based page hotkeys. In the stable (Qt-based) Skype for example I bind Ctrl+Alt+PgUp to answer a call, and Ctrl+Alt+PgDown to stop the call.
For the same reason they don't promote it to Windows users (which will have a similar program in the future replacing the current "native" software): better integration, system tray support, no need to keep your browser open or to enable browser notifications in the desktop, directly accessing and managing your camera and microphone without relying on your browser support and settings etc.
I mean that you can keep browser access to your camera completely disabled instead of having to enable it and whitelist their site. Also, not everyone uses Chromium-based browsers.
> We will be releasing updates to Skype for Linux every couple of weeks and we hope that video calling, and group video calling will be available in the coming couple of releases.
In the new version are absent:
* One-to one video calling
* Skype PSTN calling
* Skype SMS messages
* Buy Skype credit
* Add participants to ongoing call
* Change device settings
At that, this client support only the new version of the protocol, and can interact with fresh releases of Skype for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, but can not make and receive calls from the old client for Linux 4.3.0.37.
As it is, I'm glad I have to use it less and less in favor of discord, which is by all accounts, far, far superior.