> Have you ever had to "now click on the left... no, up a bit. No go back you were just there. It's the third one from th... I'll just paste the link in chat" when you were standing next to someone's desk?

Yes.

I resolve it the same way in person as I do remotely, either by pointing at the screen, asking for (and receiving) control of the mouse and keyboard, or both. If you don't know how to use the features of your screen-sharing software that permit this, you need to learn them. If your screen-sharing software does not have these features, urge your company to switch to one that does (or just switch to one that does, if your company policies permit).

> People actually pay attention in meetings.

I've seen no difference in overall meeting attentiveness in the switch to WFH. Perhaps I've been blessed to work with unusually competent and mindful people.

> Spontaneous conversations are easier. ... You get to know colleagues better.

I don't, no. If anything, spontaneous conversations are way easier remotely, as most of the "water cooler" conversations in the office happen in large "off-topic" channels. This is really good for knowing what's going on at the company, because it massively expands the audience for chatter, gossip, and unofficial news from just a handful of people to the entire company. Plus, it's async communications, which means that you don't miss out just because you weren't there.

> Whiteboarding ... is way easier.

This is true. Most folks don't have cameras hooked up to their whiteboards (or even have whiteboards!).

> [B]rainstorming is way easier.

Disagree. Virtual post-it notes and a shared text document of some kind, plus a group voice call works great.

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IshKebab 4 days ago | parent [-]

> I resolve it the same way in person as I do remotely, either by pointing at the screen, asking for (and receiving) control of the mouse and keyboard, or both. If you don't know how to use the features of your screen-sharing software that permit this, you need to learn them.

We used Google Meet, and recently switched to Teams (on Linux). Neither support either feature. I think it's impossible to do it on the web because there's no screen sharing web API (due to security fears) and no overlay drawing API either (again presumably due to security fears).

You need a native app, and Google don't make one, and Teams doesn't support Linux.

	▲	simoncion 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well, as I said: > If your screen-sharing software does not have these features, urge your company to switch to one that does (or just switch to one that does, if your company policies permit). Should you choose to embark on it, I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your quest to get collaboration software that's not crippled by platform limitations. Having said that... > I think it's impossible to do it on the web because there's no screen sharing web API... Weirdly, this isn't true. Discord claims to be able to share your screen even in the web browser version. From the "How To Stream In A Discord Channel" section of [0]: > Info: Currently audio can only be captured by the Windows desktop, MacOS desktop, Chrome browser, and mobile clients. Unfortunately, audio sharing is unavailable on Linux. I notice a conspicuous absence of "this doesn't work in a web browser" caveats for any of the other screen-sharing things that Discord does. The only caveats I notice are for audio capture on Firefox and on Linux in general. And yes, while the Info box at the top of the article says that it covers how to do this in the Desktop Client, I tested screen sharing a moment ago in the latest version of Firefox on Linux. It works just fine. When I choose to share my screen in Discord, the web browser pops up a dialog asking me if I'd like to share my screen, and -if so- would I select which window (or the entire screen) to share? > ...and no overlay drawing API either... I don't know how one would handle the "permit others to draw on top of the shared window" mechanism, but there's little doubt in my mind that something can be cooked up that's clever and not too offputting to use... assuming that there's not something already available to be used that neither of us are aware of. [0] <https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040816151-G...>