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

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#201

Post by caro_douglos » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:00 AM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #172

danShumway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Equipment is critical in pro sports, especially the more technical ones too.

This feels like someone changed the rules to the pay per view bout but didn’t let the fans know.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#202

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:00 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #165

danShumway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your comment is a punch to the gut for me, I've been developing an internal CRM for two years that embodies many of the philosophies you describe. But while it is somewhat depressing, I'm left with questions about how bad it really is. First, is it possible to develop software without inconveniencing business users with temporary (let's assume the ultimate products are better then the linux/vim/emacs they are superse…

[deleted]

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#203

Post by bob1029 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #162

bob1029 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what largely replaced business email AND these crappy chat applications for us? GitHub issue threads. We do a very large part of our collaboration right next to the code now. Email & chat is now mostly to just asynchronously notify regarding one or more issue numbers. Managers, developers, everyone. If you want something discussed or handled, make an issue. It's got a single numeric identifier that's trivial…

Know what's better than Github issues? A directory in the tree named Issues. Create files there. They all stay with the project. Append comments to them. Code snippets. What have you. git grep finds them.

This works great for developers, but your project managers and executives will not enjoy this experience as much.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#204

Post by JoshTriplett » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #73

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…

Is there any way that tweet could have been written that would have satisfied you, without actually agreeing to change course right away? To me the tweet's tone says that they honestly care and don't want people to be inconvenienced, but also want to at least see if people will warm to it. There has to be some kind of healthy balance between listening to user feedback and never changing anything. The extreme version…

> Is there any way that tweet could have been written that would have satisfied you, without actually agreeing to change course right away?

Not passive-aggressively suggesting that the problem is with the user and not the tool. "The goal is for workflows to evolve" effectively means "this is how it's going to be, you'll have to adapt (even if it's worse for you)".

My workflows have thankfully "evolved" to use different tools. Zulip and Discord both still use markdown input, and I no longer use Slack for anything.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#205

Post by Kalium » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #165

danShumway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your comment is a punch to the gut for me, I've been developing an internal CRM for two years that embodies many of the philosophies you describe. But while it is somewhat depressing, I'm left with questions about how bad it really is. First, is it possible to develop software without inconveniencing business users with temporary (let's assume the ultimate products are better then the linux/vim/emacs they are superse…

> Would we still have Twitter? Reddit? Steam? Whatsapp?

How many of those broke old workflows to introduce new ones with no clear benefits?

But that's not the point. We're not talking here about broad services like Reddit, Twitter, or Steam. We're talking about something more akin to a libary. You shouldn't break interfaces in a library without a strong, compelling reason.

Do things need to change eventually? Absolutely. Do they need to change today, because someone decided that the old workflows they don't like need to break for everyone? Maybe not. There's perhaps some room between the two.

It's been my experience that business software often represents a deep investment in a given workflow. Sometimes to the point where businesses are willing to spend a great deal of money to preserve those workflows and integrate new things into them - MuleSoft springs to mind.

Which is not to say that you're wrong. It's absolutely possible to develop new, improved software that's better in critical ways. Sometimes people and businesses are willing to put up with temporary regressions and inconveniences to gain substantial improvements. To use the above comparison, I've seen artists invest the time in learning how to draw all over again in order to jump from paper to digital.

What Slack has done is take away what was a perfectly functional workflow for many people. This doesn't look like a temporary regression or inconvenience. This looks like a permanent, hard break without substantial obvious benefits for people who used the old workflow. Communicating with users in a way that telegraphs very clearly that Slack doesn't care at all is just gilding the lily.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#206

Post by baroffoos » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:03 AM UTC

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #22

lol product managers are such a bane for tech companies. they have to keep shipping features which no ones wants but they have to show they came up with and are shipping something. i think tech companies should try and avoid product managers and designers for as long as possible.

Users are to blame. There always has to be something new, even if its no better or even worse. It just has to change regularly or people think its stale and move on. We see this loads in phones where totally useless features like samsungs curved edge or foldable phones and the removal of loads of useful features.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#207

Post by _bxg1 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #182

chx wrote: post #114

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 bee…

I actually love that drafts are brought to the top; it keeps things from getting lost for me. I even sometimes will write one character as a reminder I need to finish. But still, I understand your frustration. That being said, search makes it really easy to solve this. I rarely do anything other than Cmd+K/Ctrl+K, and type a character or two. For me, it's become second nature, and I never find myself searching around…

The infuriating thing is that these would be some of the easiest possible features to add a toggle for. There's nothing wrong with liking drafts that float to the top, or rich text editing, but when a significant portion of your users is extremely upset about a tiny UX behavior like this, even if they end up being a minority, there's no excuse to not add an opt-out.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#208

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #157

danShumway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"

This is honestly a major contributor to the badness of software in general.

Ideal software would be continually fine-tuned and shrunk -- there'd be no bi-annual massive redesign, no change for change's sake alone. Instead of bored devs sitting around an office looking for ways to integrate $FRAMEWORK_OF_THE_MONTH and get those coveted resume points, a well-run project would make something work well and then they'd leave well enough alone, focusing only on bugfixes, performance, and other "boring" projects that don't make for big press releases. Changes to working products should be as surgical and minimal as possible.

A good compensation structure that would prioritize stability and consistency would pay an ongoing royalty to the relevant technical people based on the product's performance, uptime, and minimal crash/bug occurrence. "Hours worked" would be minimally relevant. One wonders if so many people would be so desperate to desecrate their production infrastructure if a high-quality work product and compensation were actually correlated.

But because we can't break out of the assembly-line 40-hours-per-week mentality, we pay developers as if they're line workers, and there's always got to be something on the line to keep those worker bees buzzing, regardless of the aggregate negative impact of constant uncoordinated meddling in complex systems.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#209

Post by tln » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

The article says typing this doesn't work-

   when you do `foo()` it foos the bar.

But it works fine for me.

His second big gripe is you can't position your cursor before a styled phrase and add to the front of it. That's a legitimate annoyance, but tbf Google docs and TextEdit behave the same way.

I'm 1000x more annoyed with the features taken away from ScreenHero than this stuff. Or the channels jumping over to some "draft" list.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#210

Post by xfitm3 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

Fuck slack. They're hostile to user choice and preferences, pushing a one-size-fits all attitude. Communication preferences are extremely personal and must be respected.

I have a custom ssl proxy to intercept slack.com and modify their api, eliminating what I believe to be dark patterns. Some things I do:

* Force dark mode always

* Disable favicon.ico updating when there are notifications in DnD

* Group channels based on name prefix (stealing behavior from an add-on)

* Ignore bots

It's hard to keep this up to date so it's not really that robust. If I open source it I know I'll get legal pressure from slack, not to mention they'll probably try to block it.