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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

#251

Post by jmccaf »

spenvo wrote: post #229
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…

Another thing in Slack that has annoyingly changed (without an option to toggle off) is: its "Drafts" feature - where leaving a channel with an unfinished message means that the channel itself gets moved to the top of the left sidebar. This completely breaks my flow, because 1.) you can no longer use up/down hotkeys to reliably go between specific channels, and 2.) I frequently have to do a double take and ask, "wher…

I use Slack very often, and I also get annoyed that Drafts features often tugs a frequently-used channel to a different spot in sidebar. "Where did that channel go?"

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#252

Post by hunter2_ »

vaillancourtmax wrote: post #100
Jestar342 wrote: post #8

It is infuriatingly terrible. A regression. So many times I've had similar woes with the code block and quote block mechanisms too. Another truly bizarre feature I noted and sent a bug report about was that when adding an image to an "Action" the _minimum_ size requirement is 512px by 512px. For an image that is never rendered larger than 64x64.

Agreed on the code/quote block woes. > never rendered larger than 64x64 On a high-density display, that 64px x 64px image covers a lot more surface area than 64x64 actual pixels on the physical display. I suspect that this 512x512px requirement is related to scaling factors on devices with high DPI displays.

I'm not even sure why we refer to logical pixels (a.k.a. CSS pixels, etc.) anymore, for exactly the reason you mentioned. We should be saying things like "this only needs to be 512px x 512px because it's never rendered larger than two degrees of viewing angle" or something to that effect. But I guess that's hard to think about... ems could be a good compromise.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#254

Post by larkeith »

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…

Hmmm... It might be worth making a Slack-style interface for Matrix. It already supports replies, these could be flavoured as threads instead.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#255

Post by nwallin »

michaelmrose wrote: post #220
_jal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a surefire path to irrelevance. Nobody wants groupware. Nobody uses it unless forced. On the bright side, that would leave a hole in the market for an enterprising chat developer to fill, hopefully with something less annoying and resource intensive.

You mean like an pre packaged combo of an IRC server + logging + bouncer for users that can trivially be rolled out. Like one days work for 1 person?

The problem isn't implementing the features, the problem is making the UX/UI intuitive to people who call Microsoft's tech support when Firefox displays a "cannot connect to internet" message because they unplugged their router because they needed the socket for something else.

IRC is objectively superior to slack as a distributed chat client, but goddamned if the first step into slack isn't significantly shallower than the first step into IRC.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#256

Post by BigJono »

SwellJoe wrote: post #107
Jestar342 wrote: post #8

It is infuriatingly terrible. A regression. So many times I've had similar woes with the code block and quote block mechanisms too. Another truly bizarre feature I noted and sent a bug report about was that when adding an image to an "Action" the _minimum_ size requirement is 512px by 512px. For an image that is never rendered larger than 64x64.

All code sucks now, not just blocks. Inline code screws up at least half the time I use it; it tries to guess what I want, and sometimes doesn't end when I close it with another backtick. And, when going back and editing it sometimes carries the formatting outside of where I put the backticks. So frustrating. I hate having to think every time I insert code and re-do it about half the time; I'd rather have no formatti…

The worst thing about it is how fucking easy it would be to fix. Just treat the backticks as characters when backspacing or navigating with the arrows, that way you can 'enter' or 'exit' a code block reliably, and all previous muscle memory from the markdown editor would carry over.

But no, apparently that's too hard for a company that's worth more dollars than the number of seconds any of us have been alive.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#257

Post by hunter2_ »

chx wrote: post #245
hunter2_ wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is that companies seem to think that users hate toggles. It's extremely hard for me to understand how valid this might be since I have techy people around me most often, but even when I don't, I've never heard someone complain about excess toggles. Ever. Is this a thing people do? I hear orders of magnitude more complaints about lack of toggles.

Then bury them so deep they will never see it. There's already a Preferences // Advanced tab. Do whatever you need to appease the wide population. It appears only in desktop app or browser even though it's under advanced? Deal! I will still be happy. Is it a CLI option? Fine . I have been using Unix-ish command lines since 1993. I can deal with an option or two. Yeah that wouldn't work on mobile but the primary audie…

Agreed. chx from Drupal? If so, thanks for your contributions.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#258

Post by ncmncm »

bob1029 wrote: post #203
ncmncm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So much the better?

Github could have put all the issues into the same repository, and built on top of that for the sake of managers, but that would make projects too portable. Having important project metadata in their domain aids lock-in.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#259

Post by kstrauser »

superbaconman wrote: post #185
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…

I stopped using confluence the moment I realized the markdown editor was removed. I don't care so much about the flavor, but there's something very annoying about needing to get fancy with the way I edit text to preserve formatting.

Same here. I'd made some nice (and quite simple) tooling to parse docstrings out of a Python project and turn them into Markdown that I could copy-and-paste into Confluence. It was so convenient to run something like "make documents" to basically compile the project's documentation from inspecting the project itself! But then Confluence broke their editor by making it WYSIWYG-only. And in response, I broke Confluence by convincing our CTO to ditch that now worthless documentation system for something else.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#260

Post by fragmede »

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…

Survivorship bias.

What happened to Digg? Myspace? UI isn't the only reason, but it's definitely a contributing factor in their demise.

The eBay story about changing the color of the banner should be followed for new features as well.

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