In a move that will increase users of Microsoft’s newest browser, Edge, by around the population of the ISS; you can now place voice and video calls from your browser without plugins. From the Skype blog
Today, we’re excited to announce that Skype for Web, Outlook.com, Office Online and OneDrive now support real-time, plugin free voice, video and group video calling on Microsoft’s Edge browser, using the ORTC media engine that was recently embedded in Microsoft Edge.
No download. No plugin to install. Just sign-in and click to start a call on Skype with Microsoft Edge.
Plugin free Skype I hear you cry, so we can use it in Firefox, Chrome etc? Of course not, that’s be silly. Microsoft have chosen to embrace the extremely new ORTC protocol specification that other browsers don’t support (yet). That’s not too bad right? Well they also choose to use a video codec which is a subset of H.264 which currently won’t work with the big browsers.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, the other browsers are implementing these codecs and Microsoft appear to be willing to implement more codecs in the future… but you have to wonder, why not start with the existing stuff and change it later? The cynic in me make me think maybe it’s to give Edge a push.
