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Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

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Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#111

Post by tbabb »

This reminds me of Atlassian's god-awful WYSIWYG editor.

In both cases, I get that some users can't or don't like to use a machine grammar/markup, however simple. For some people markup is bad UX. Give them a WYSIWYG; that's fine.

But don't remove the markup editor if your WYSIWYG editor is anything but a perfect one-two-one replacement for markup (and I have never seen one that satisfies that).

IIRC there was a time when Confluence axed their markup, and inevitably a table or a template would get completely screwed, and there was nothing you could do but recreate it. TERRIBLE design.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#112

Post by saxonww »

njharman wrote: post #83

I've found "developers", people who work extensively with plain text and mark up languages, mostly hate WYSIWYG. Because it just gets in the way of / works differently than the skills/knowledge they already have. I presume people who primarily work in Word/OpenOffice/Whatever Apples thing is, feel the opposite. If your customers include both, UI is basically impossible to get right for everyone.

I have two responses to this:

1. I used to administer a mediawiki instance for R&D at a mid-size enterprise software company. It was used by perhaps 300 people. Many, many developers disliked wikitext and wanted a visual editor and/or word-to-wiki converter. Some people just prefer wysiwyg over markup.

2. If your customers include a meaningful population of both, _include both_. Make the 'friendly' editor the default, with a preference to use the old (presumably stable) editor. Obviously this doesn't work for all features, but it seems like the text entry box in the Slack app is one that could be easily configured this way (maybe not?).

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#113

Post by Analemma_ »

ghostcluster wrote: post #70
dicytea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The WYSIWYG editor is being gradually rolled out over the coming days – if you don't see it in some workspaces, just hang tight, you will soon. " Not to mention, unintentional threats.

This attitude to their rollout reminds me of the recent rollout of Twitter's maligned new desktop UI, the new YouTube Studio Beta, and reddit's new UI. There is almost a meme of online platform service providers not understanding their users and their workflows, and rolling out new revisions that hamper or outright remove functionality that those users rely on. I guess the canonical example would be that one Digg red…

> There is almost a meme of online platform service providers not understanding their users and their workflows, and rolling out new revisions that hamper or outright remove functionality that those users rely on.

True, but there's also a meme of people screaming bloody murder over a redesign for a day, and then being fine with it, e.g. [0]. Some complaints are worth investigating and some are just who-moved-my-cheese griping that can and should be ignored. It can be tricky to tell which is which though.

[0]: https://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter/facebook_layout

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#114

Post by chx »

The exact same happened with the draft feature. The importance of habit forming UI is very well documented, going back at least as far as Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface and the draft feature completely breaks it -- if you as much as accidentally leave a character in there, you can't find the channel/DM at its normal place. Despite repeated calls to make it optional, nothing.

Threads are also broken, has always been. For example, if you get a notification in mail and it's in a thread, you can't jump to it, clicking the link dumps you into the channel and you are left wondering. Previously (as in, going back at least to '90 or so with IRC) you were able to skim the entirety of discussion in backscroll, now you'd need to open every thread on its own. As a senior developer, this was tremendously helpful to everyone because I could just skim a larger batch of discussions at a time and give some advice later as needed. Both of these problems could be solved if threads could be opened, you know, thread style into the channel. But... no. Also, if you answer in the special "threads" view then you will need to click the new answers link every time someone answers. It's terrible UX.

It used to be that adding a text snippet was right in the "add" menu you opened on the right hand side of the text, now it's in a submenu, seriously slowing down creating one. The menu wasn't getting large at all, no reason to do this.

It's very strange, they are the top dog, with immense inertia but it doesn't mean a younger, more eager, better UX, slimmer chat won't replace them. Digg to Reddit, remember? Until then, does anyone want to write a "Better Slack" collection of scripts injected into the app? I pledge 20 USD to fix these three problems, anyone else?

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#115

Post by james_s_tayler »

guessmyname wrote: post #46

This is funny because I work across the street of Slack’s office in Vancouver, Canada and two Slack engineers who I frequently chat with during our daily commute already told me they —and a handful of other employees— hate the WYSIWYG input box too, but were afraid to express their feelings because their role is irrelevant compared to the people who made the decision to ship it.

Ahhh the HIPPO strikes again.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#117

Post by _jal »

guessmyname wrote: post #46

This is funny because I work across the street of Slack’s office in Vancouver, Canada and two Slack engineers who I frequently chat with during our daily commute already told me they —and a handful of other employees— hate the WYSIWYG input box too, but were afraid to express their feelings because their role is irrelevant compared to the people who made the decision to ship it.

Bad sign. If the rank and file are afraid to give honest internal feedback, they have a management problem.

At least for me, that's a time-to-leave signal.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#118

Post by bradstewart »

njharman wrote: post #83

I've found "developers", people who work extensively with plain text and mark up languages, mostly hate WYSIWYG. Because it just gets in the way of / works differently than the skills/knowledge they already have. I presume people who primarily work in Word/OpenOffice/Whatever Apples thing is, feel the opposite. If your customers include both, UI is basically impossible to get right for everyone.

Why wouldn't they make this optional? Then everybody gets we they want.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#119

Post by sergiotapia »

I just saw this pop up in our workspaces at Papa's slack at the end of the day. Haven't had a chance to use it yet. Do you need to use the WYSIWYG or is it still markdown friendly?

Edit: Should've read the article:

>That is, closing backticks are not respected! If you want the proper display, you must hit right-arrow after the closing backtick (but before the space). That’s quite a gymnastic for someone with decades of muscle memory.

This is trash.

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