Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#151

Post by yellowapple » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

llampx wrote: post #3

I've given up entirely on the Slack desktop app and use Ripcord exclusively. Much faster, more responsive and easier to use for 99% of my time spent on slack.

My main complaint about Ripcord is that it's non-FOSS, which is somewhat concerning to me (the price is a non-issue; I'd be happy to pay the $20 if that comes with source code access). Sure, Slack itself ain't FOSS either, but I'm more inclined to make it as FOSS as possible (e.g. via Rambox or in an actual browser like Firefox) than to switch clients.

It also doesn't seem to acknowledge my starred channels; while the bookmarks are better anyway, those don't carry over to my phone or my other computers.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#152

Post by anaisbetts » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

jakebasile wrote: post #19

Reading their non-replies on Twitter feels like I'm reading something specifically designed to piss me off. Smarmy apologies, low empathy, cocksure of how correct their vision of a chat service should be. This one in particular[1]: > The goal is for workflows to evolve, but we realize change can be a bit of a pain. "Stupid peasant, we are only here to help you. Once you see the glorious vision we have you will thank…

Slack's voice is great when they're saying positive things, but God is it exhausting when they are replying to negative feedback. It's like listening to Ned Flanders, only with some extra patronizing emoji to rub it in

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#153

Post by geitir » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

trynewideas wrote: post #131

trynewideas wrote: post #126

If they didn't care what designers thought when they shipped a new logo featuring a colorful pinwheel of erect, stubby penises and dangling testicles, then they won't care what users think when they deploy the equivalent feature.

Also, I don't know what anyone expected from a company that looked at HipChat and thought, yeah, let's buy _that_.

Probably just a bartering chip for better jira integration

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#154

Post by Twirrim » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

tbabb wrote: post #111

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…

> 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.

There was. I was using Confluence at the time, and it broke a lot of things. There was a wonderful filed bug at the time with a lot of angry people on it, where they promised to bring the old mechanism back as an option, and they never did. That told me everything I needed to know about Atlassian.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#155

Post by jdoliner » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

I've been suffering from this one too so I'll share the most annoying part for me. I frequently have reasons to type out glob patterns generally in backticks. The interface for this is completely broken in the new WYSIWYG editor. Here's what happens when I try to type: `//`, things work normally up until the second "" at which point the "/" between them becomes gets bolded, which makes no sense, because you can't bold text inside of backticks. Then when I input the second "`" it becomes a monospace block containing `//` and the ""s have completely ceased to exist.

They also somehow broke the tab key for tabbing through users when you're trying to @ someone, after the first tab it just starts refocusing your input boxes rather than selecting different users.

Edit: Ironically, HN's built in markdown seems to understand asterisks, but not backticks, which leads to behavior similar to Slack's that I'm ranting about, I've replaced them with to make it clear.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#156

Post by spion » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

WYSIWYG in general is terrible as it tries to hide the underlying structure rather than show it. We really need an UX expert to rethink how these editors should behave so we can move forward with editing rich text

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#157

Post by Swizec » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #139

jakebasile wrote: post #19

Reading their non-replies on Twitter feels like I'm reading something specifically designed to piss me off. Smarmy apologies, low empathy, cocksure of how correct their vision of a chat service should be. This one in particular[1]: > The goal is for workflows to evolve, but we realize change can be a bit of a pain. "Stupid peasant, we are only here to help you. Once you see the glorious vision we have you will thank…

> The goal is for workflows to evolve This exchange is a pretty good summation of one of the biggest purely practical reasons why I'm so obsessive about tools, and why I'm so willing to put up with the initial cost of learning systems like Linux and Vim/Emacs. Outside of fundamentally better workflow improvements, most professional fields don't randomly change their tools. If you gave a professional artist a new penc…

> Only in the software industry would someone tell me that my professional tools should change because change is inherently good

Translation: "we're paying all these engineers and product managers and they need something to do"

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#158

Post by userbinator » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

I suppose a new acronym would be suitable for this situation: WYSIWYGBNWYW, What You See Is What You Get But Not What You Want.

With the availability of detailed API documentation (https://api.slack.com ) that seems to make it relatively easy to write your own client (and they even link to some thirdparty clients as an example of what you can do), their refusal to change could almost be interpreted as "no, you fix it".

If I had the need and time, I could probably write a native Win32 Slack client in a very short time; in fact I'm a bit surprised that one hasn't appeared yet because I was expecting that to happen. Maybe it will, if they keep messing around with the official client.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#159

Post by jmull » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

I feel so blissfully privileged every time Slack comes up here.

Somehow using Slack has never come up in my life. I'm sure not looking forward to it.

(Though I do know the pain of having to use some frustratingly crappy-ass software because working with a client or for an employer makes it non-optional. Come to think of it, I've done my time.)

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#160

Post by pfranz » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

exogeny wrote: post #38

I'm going to take the opposite of this argument, and for bonafides, I run the product team for a 1000+ person company. I'm going to assume that this thing was tested out the wazoo, both qualitatively and behind enough feature-flags and buckets to keep Optimizely in business for a year. So I have no doubt that this wasn't just a hunch on their part, but something that they meticulously tracked. If I'm wrong, definitel…

I work with a bunch of non-tech people. I get what they're doing. The techy people are the only ones who bother using ` for anything. I have no idea if non-techies will start now that there's a button for it, but typing it is now really annoying for everyone who has been using it.

I kinda reminds me when Confluence added their WYSIWYG editor--or using Frontpage. I basically /had/ to go to code view to get the page to look consistent. So far Discourse has been my favorite implementation, with preview being off to the side. I'm sure that would eat up too much real estate for Slack.