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

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#561

Post by feanaro » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #447

buboard wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solutions things are more complex it's kinda sad that it has come to be that tech companies will consider installing matrix "complex".

> it's kinda sad that it has come to be that tech companies will consider installing matrix "complex". I go to the Matrix website and there's a lot of "blah blah blah" about how it's an open network, a decentralized messaging protocol yada yada yada" Nothing about "how to actually start using the thing" Then you get here finally https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now/ > To get started using Matrix, pick a cl…

> More importantly, you don't need to get IT or Procurement involved to try slack.

Are you implying you do have to do so to try out Matrix? You can simply use the web version of Riot hosted here (https://riot.im/app) and sign up for a free account on matrix.org.

There's a link to this accessible from the "Try Matrix Now" page you referenced above. Admittedly, it seems the words inviting you to try Riot "on the web" were linked to https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/riot instead of to https://riot.im/app/. That's probably a mistake and should be fixed.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#562

Post by roschern » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

YES! This annoys me to no end!

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#563

Post by ikornaselur » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

timcederman wrote: post #294

jdoliner wrote: post #155

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…

If you hit ctrl/cmd-z after it automatically changes something you can keep going like you used to. e.g. try typing `foo`, and then hit ctrl-z, it'll revert it to plain text. I've found that useful for getting around the autoformatting.

Interestingly, if I do that, it will then send it unformatted. I want to format in the actual chat, just not in my input.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#564

Post by ed312 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:05 AM UTC

Roark66 wrote: post #472

aero142 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet a lot of money I already know the pitch. It's the same one that the Confluence PM I'm sure made. "We have done very well selling to technical programmers and hip startups, but the market is so much bigger. shows Office 365 revenue numbers vs Slack revenue numbers . We have an opportunity to take this to the next level. We need to make this the goto office communication platform. cheers . Markdown may seem…

>I would bet a lot of money I already know the pitch. It's the same one that the Confluence PM I'm sure made. "We have done very well selling to technical programmers and hip startups, but the market is so much bigger. shows Office 365 revenue numbers vs Slack revenue numbers. We have an opportunity to take this to the next level. We need to make this the goto office communication platform. cheers. You're probably ri…

Slack works with Okta which works with AD. These days it seems most IT orgs don't want software interfacing with AD directly (mainly because AD is a hot mess to deal with). Also, Teams is free with O365 :(

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#565

Post by mcjiggerlog » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:05 AM UTC

darkcl wrote: post #528

I have contacted them, and they replied me with this Lucas (Slack) Nov 20, 9:15 PM PST Hi there, Thank you for taking the time to write in and provide this feedback. I apologize for the disruption to your existing workflows. Our aim is to build an editor that works for all Slack users to better format their messages and clearly communicate in channels, regardless of their technical expertise. While we are taking all…

There's Mattermost[1], which is an open source alternative to Slack. I haven't tried it yet so can't vouch for how it compares.

[1] https://mattermost.com

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#566

Post by cpcallen » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:05 AM UTC

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.

This sounds just like how my friends at Google reacted when Gmail and Google Docs were given the "Kennedy" makeover some years ago. Apparently there were a lot of memes going round to the effect of "still have one tab with the old Gmail open; praying Chrome doesn't crash".

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#567

Post by loriverkutya » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:06 AM UTC

"Thanks so much for the feedback here, we really appreciate it and I'm sorry that the new formatting options have disrupted your flow. There isn't a way to revert to the old formatting method, I'm afraid. We don't currently have plans to make the new formatting configurable though we are carefully considering all our customers' feedback.

If it helps, you can turn off the formatting toolbar by clicking the Aa symbol to the right of the message input field.

The new message formatting is in the initial stages of launch and we're definitely planning on keeping it updated and making changes that make sense to us within the vision of the product."

I really sad to see when a "vision" is more important for a company than the customer feedback.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#568

Post by rmsaksida » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:10 AM UTC

mattacular wrote: post #535

ck425 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Power users (normally engineers) drove Slack usage at my last company. I'm now in an org that uses Teams and all the engineers want to use Slack. Likely won't happen but it's important to note that this feature isn't just annoying a small segment of users, it's annoying the small segment that are most vocal about adopting Slack. And who due to economic power arguably have more influence.

The problem with that is Slack no longer needs a small segment of vocal users. They used to, but now they're a huge established company with plenty of service contracts across tons of industries.

That's true, but it can change. Just as tech users were vocal about getting people in, they can be vocal about getting people out.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#569

Post by ailideex » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:10 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #502

_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.

Given that Microsoft Teams is literally an existential threat, they really want to listen to feedback internally!

Microsoft Teams is pretty horrible

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#570

Post by gmueckl » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 11:11 AM UTC

igetspam wrote: post #318

timcederman wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hit ctrl/cmd-z after it automatically changes something you can keep going like you used to. e.g. try typing `foo`, and then hit ctrl-z, it'll revert it to plain text. I've found that useful for getting around the autoformatting.

That's ridiculous, right?. Cmd/Ctrl-z has a defined function. Slack is hijacking that because they've decided that decades of established patterns are wrong and creating another one-off for their very specific use case is the right thing to do. The hubris...

There are other products out there that put automatic changes on the undo stack. I regularly encounter this behaviour in Visual Studio: pasting code in the editor is decomposed into pasting text and reformatting it. So the first Ctrl-Z reverts the code to the exact text you copied. The second Ctrl-Z will remove it.