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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

#321

Post by jhomedall »

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…

They're currently trying to force this into pull requests in Bitbucket. Right now you can revert to the old-style pull requests with Markdown support, but that is going to go away once the new system is out of beta.

I really regret going with Atlassian here; I would have advised against it if I knew about this. I will definitely advise against it in the future.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#322

Post by anyfoo »

baby wrote: post #275
_jal wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And this ladies and gentlemen is the over reaction of the year!

In my company (not a small one) and in any previous ones, I’ve never even thought that people could be afraid of giving honest feedback. I’ve seen internal feedback causing change, I’ve also seen it being ignored (sometimes to be listened to later after all, sometimes it turned out that things weren’t as bad as they seemed), but I’ve never perceived any potential for negative repercussions.

So if that is indeed the case here, then it does indicate some problems.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#323

Post by craftinator »

cwilkes wrote: post #296
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.

Most of the time toggles are done poorly in that I can’t tell if they are on or off. There’s no consensus on if that is left or right. Or lit up or darkened. It is maddening. In my opinion the right way to do toggles is to have area below it that is either enabled / expanded for On or grayed out / collapsed for Off. That way I can also read what the toggle implies. I suppose that can be done in mouse over if there ar…

Or just use a labeled toggle. "On" and "off" are both very short words, take hardly any space, and remove ambiguity. No reason not to use them.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#326

Post by jorblumesea »

Imo, they've been on a roll lately when it comes to annoying designs. Drafts now bubble up in the UI, so if you start a chat want to finish it, it's all the way the top, regardless of where it started. Threads are similarly broken, if you click on a thread link, it won't link to the new addition to the conversation, just the entire thread. There's also weird bugs or possibly design issues where in a thread, you have limited or not the same options as you have in a general chat window.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#327

Post by igetspam »

jhomedall wrote: post #321
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…

They're currently trying to force this into pull requests in Bitbucket. Right now you can revert to the old-style pull requests with Markdown support, but that is going to go away once the new system is out of beta. I really regret going with Atlassian here; I would have advised against it if I knew about this. I will definitely advise against it in the future.

This is why I heavily advocate for not using Atlassian products. I use the "can't trust Australia" statement as a supporting argument but the terrible editor is what started my crusade. My company uses Jira but I do all my tracking in Clubhouse. We have Confluence but most of us write docs in Google Docs because it's less painful. I recently got us moving away from Bitbucket too. If Slack stands by this change (like they did with removing the IRC bridge), I'll be pushing hard to get rid of it before we start growing.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#328

Post by networkimprov »

rbavocadotree wrote: post #314
p1necone wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, isn't slack only popular because of "cool" tech startups picking it up initially?

65 of the fortune 100 companies use slack.

But how many of them do so after acquisition of a cool tech startup? :-)

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#329

Post by TranquilMarmot »

vailripper wrote: post #99
nerdponx wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what else has a terrible WYSIWYG editor? Microsoft Teams. It's kind of sort of like Markdown, except when it isn't, or when it breaks. At least it's a step up from Lync.

Sounds like Atlassians approach with Jira - "it supports markdown, except when it doesn't!"

I _so badly_ want Jira and Confluence to support just plain old markdown. Their editor is a nightmare; every programmer where I work hates it but all of management seems to love it.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#330

Post by baddox »

city41 wrote: post #272
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…

The draft feature positively boggles my mind. The intention seems to be to collect all your drafts into one location. But that comes with the assumption people will have multiple drafts for ... chat channels? Do people really work that way? If the actual intention is to remind you you have a half written message, seems some kind of indicator on the channel would suffice. Having my channel “disappear” on me is maddeni…

It’s so simple. They could add the channel/DM to the Drafts list while also keeping it in its normal spot. I cringe with sympathetic embarrassment just thinking about how ridiculously obvious this is and how easy it would be to implement.
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