I’m one of the dinosaurs who still uses Skype to talk to some non-computer people who haven’t moved away from it.
Skype similarly gets worse and worse each update. They removed the ability to have multiple windows, they made links open in some kind of in-Skype browser I can’t find a setting a to turn off, they added a weather widget which is dumb.
Thankfully the weather widget exists, though, because their new in app browser doesn’t have any way to close the in app “window” it opens - no x, nowhere to click to close it. The only way I’ve found to close it is to click the weather widget which loads into the same space and that has an x to close it. I bet they’re getting tons of positive numbers about weather widget use from users just looking to close the shitty in app browser. I don’t know if it even counts as a dark pattern - I can’t tell if the Skype designers are this incompetent or actually hate the few users left still on that shitty platform. Maybe they’re purposely trying to get Microsoft to shut it down by making it worse every update?
Every second I use skype I want to get away from it, I just have to convince a handful of people to move as well, or I guess let them know they won’t be able to reach me through there and give up talking to them.
I noticed the outlook link handling thing on my personal machine and figured out how to turn it off but damn that was annoying. I’m not going to be annoyed into using edge - I won’t be tricked into it either. Every time this happens my willingness to go along with this gets smaller and smaller. I have a bunch of paid Microsoft licenses - windows, office365, etc. Once gaming off windows matures a little more I think its time to move away from this abusive shit.
Skype similarly gets worse and worse each update. They removed the ability to have multiple windows, they made links open in some kind of in-Skype browser I can’t find a setting a to turn off, they added a weather widget which is dumb.
Thankfully the weather widget exists, though, because their new in app browser doesn’t have any way to close the in app “window” it opens - no x, nowhere to click to close it. The only way I’ve found to close it is to click the weather widget which loads into the same space and that has an x to close it. I bet they’re getting tons of positive numbers about weather widget use from users just looking to close the shitty in app browser. I don’t know if it even counts as a dark pattern - I can’t tell if the Skype designers are this incompetent or actually hate the few users left still on that shitty platform. Maybe they’re purposely trying to get Microsoft to shut it down by making it worse every update?
Every second I use skype I want to get away from it, I just have to convince a handful of people to move as well, or I guess let them know they won’t be able to reach me through there and give up talking to them.
I noticed the outlook link handling thing on my personal machine and figured out how to turn it off but damn that was annoying. I’m not going to be annoyed into using edge - I won’t be tricked into it either. Every time this happens my willingness to go along with this gets smaller and smaller. I have a bunch of paid Microsoft licenses - windows, office365, etc. Once gaming off windows matures a little more I think its time to move away from this abusive shit.