WebEx is Stupid
So I participated in a conference call today where we were asked to use WebEx conferencing.
Here’s the pop-up dialog box I got when trying to log in from my Mac using Firefox 3.5.
Why?
Um, I’m sorry WebEx, you’ve given me zero reason to let you have UNRESTRICED ACCESS to my computer. Why do you need it? All I want to do is participate in a conference, not necessarily let you do whatever you want with my computer.
Turns out if you hit “Deny”, there’s no feedback at all. I get back a mostly white screen. No error message saying I need to allow access, and so on. So, there’s no conference. Um, ok. Gee, thanks.
That’s bad programming, and bad communicating.
Ok, so I guess if I want to participate in the conference I have to say Ok. Over the next two hours, we were uncermoniously disconnected from the teleconference portion, probably when the 1 hour time elapsed. No warning. Buh-bye. And then after re-logging back in, and redialing the teleconference, at some point I got this warning message.
4GB is apparently not enough 
Um, I have 4 GIGAbytes of RAM in this computer, with over 2.2 GB free. How is it I’ve run out of memory?
Bad programming. Bad software.
Hmmm… why don’t you try out Rhub ’s Turbomeeting. I’ve never had any problems with that. They offer hosted and appliances for web conferencing. Check them out. http://rhubcom.com/
Hi Brandon,
I am the Product Manager for WebEx, responsible for cross platform support. The Java applet message is not WebEx message; this is a standard message that comes from the operating system (Mac OS 10.5 in this case). If we were to prevent this message, it could introduce security risks. I do think that Apple should update the text of this dialog though.
The out of memory error message should not have been displayed as the problem has nothing to do with memory. This has been resolved in the latest WebEx version (WBS 27). You were using version WBS 26 which is what intercall.webex.com is running.
Thanks.
–Sanjay
Ok, so if the error message was caused by the operating system…why haven’t I seen it before when loading a Java applet in this browser? Not ever. WebEx must be doing something different, no?
And, that doesn’t explain why when I said deny WebEx didn’t provide any guidance/help explaining why that unrestricted access is necessary. Nor did WebEx provide any information ahead of time what to expect. I don’t recall if I checked the details tab for information or not, but I’m guessing I did try it, and I don’t recall getting any usable information there either. All of that’s should be in WebEx’s control, no?
For what it’s worth, I was in a four site conference with a major publisher. After having getting dumped out a couple times, I signed in with a username of “WebEx Sucks”. By the time we were done, and after having the host get dumped out, he agreed with the sentiments expressed by my username.
@Karen
At first I was a little skeptical of this comment–I even Googled the username to see if the user was associated rhubcom.com (which she doesn’t appear to be).
Meh, I think that while Web conferencing should be bullet proof–things aren’t a whole lot different from 10 years ago. It’s which one sucks less for what you want to do.