Sudden removal of Microsoft Edge support in 1.7.7

I noticed this weekend 1.7.7 wasn’t released (update: now released), but that text was changed on the Web SDK - Upcoming Changes page to cite this:

Removed

  • Disable support for Microsoft Edge in place of Chromium Edge.

This is being tied into the mandatory upgrade which must be done by end of May, which means we will be stuck with a lot of customers on older machines with Microsoft Edge without a solution.

Why is this change being made abruptly?

Hey @michael_p.zoom,

Can you speak to this?

Thanks,
Tommy

Agree, this was an abrupt removal. To be clear, this removes support for legacy Edge in favor of Chromium Edge. However, in our logs we see exactly 0% usage of Edge Chromium, and 8-10% usage of legacy Edge. But our user population is in very locked down IT environments, so this is not unexpected since Chromium Edge has only been officially available since January 2020. This will have a significant impact on our user population

Hey @tim.murphy,

@michael_p.zoom can speak to this more in depth, but in short, It’s because Edge doesn’t support the same GCM encryption that we do

Thanks,
Tommy

@michael_p.zoom is it at all possible to place in a stub to support GCM as a polyfill or similar?

@tommy @michael_p.zoom another question to add, will IE continue to be supported for view-only? Does it support GCM ciphers?

Not only this but Safari and Firefox support has apparently also suddenly been removed.

Zoom is officially dead in our books. Endless customers of ours have been suffering for days now due to Zoom’s crap. How can a company like Zoom be so incompetent …

Can you cite the source of that?

Hi @tim.murphy @stan_b @rahul2 - We have removed support for Classic Edge due to the fact that with releasing Zoom 5.0, we have included a new AES 256-bit GCM encryption for added meeting data protection & improved resistance to tampering and Classic Edge does not have the same algorithm.
Therefore, we cannot support it and urge customers update to Edge Chromium.
Not only the newest MS Edge browser supports our new AES encryption but this will enable your customers to have VOIP support in Edge, thus providing an overall better Zoom experience.

@flippyhead - Can you elaborate on Safari & Firefox support? Not sure what you mean by that.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

@michael_p.zoom will IE support AES-256-GCM for viewing?

I believe @flippyhead is talking about webinar audio support.

@stan_b At a high level, IE11 uses a different Encryption & Decryption method with our backend server.

Nothing has changed with Safari, we still support webinar audio support for attendees. The only thing that will change with Firefox is that we will support VOIP for meetings & Webinars with our next release - https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/guides/stay-up-to-date/upcoming-changes/web-sdk

@michael_p.zoom thanks for the confirmation that IE11 will continue to work. It’s not possible to have Microsoft Edge also use this same method?

Just want to make sure we (both Zoom and your customers) don’t cause some really bad headaches out there removing Microsoft Edge if we had another option while still supporting GCM.

Thanks!

@stan_b No worries, it’s up to Edge(Old version) to adopt the same method for support, this is why we recommend to use the new Edge browser.
In essence, we do urge all of our customers to update their environment (Native client, browsers, SDK versions etc.) to stay up to date with the latest features and security enhancements to ensure everyone has the best Zoom experience possbile.
We understand certain customers are unable to do so as quickly as others, which is something we take into consideration when making drastic changes.

Thanks

What I mean is that your documentation says the Web SDK supports browser audio on Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge and yet that is not at all the case. It now only works on Chrome and Chromium Edge.

I added more details some time ago here: Webinar audio support claims are wrong or have changed

Hi @flippyhead,

The removal of Safari & Firefox VOIP for Webinars is a bug in version 1.7.7. We will have this fix in version 1.7.8.

Thanks

@michael_p.zoom does GCM get rolled out in 1.7.8 or 1.8.0 (delayed to June)?

Hey @stan_b,

You can see the release schedule here:

Thanks,
Tommy