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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

#651

Post by chetanbhasin »

mijoharas wrote: post #641

I tried speaking to support to find out if I could downgrade, some of my colleagues don't have this feature. They couldn't(/wouldn't) tell me how to. One thing that isn't mentioned is the behaviour with pressing up to edit a previous comment, it will put you into the span if the span goes to the end of the message. I've also had numerous times where the span hasn't closed correctly leading to things in backticks not…

Same here. Hate it! But I think it can be disabled. I'm not sure if they've rolled it out for everyone already, but there is an "Aa" sight at the bottom right corner that you can click to disable it and go back to the old style.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#652

Post by acdha »

joepie91_ wrote: post #646
ascar wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean with "you" the operator of the tool, then yes I agree partially. But in this context it's more like "you" the user and then using open source alternatives doesn't make a big difference. Updates (which you generally want for security/good features/fixes/x) will still break your workflow regularly. It's about how the service handles change (e.g. options to use the old interface etc.) that make the differenc…

It being open-source (under your control) or not does make a difference here. In an open-source thing, with this sort of productivity-harming breakage, you could worst-case just pay a random freelancer to fix it for you. You don't have that option with Slack.

That’s how you end up with critical apps which are full of known security issues because now upgrading requires reverse-engineering and migrating a bunch of one-off customizations. This approach only works if you’re committed to paying regularly to maintain your fork.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#653

Post by the8472 »

huckyaus wrote: post #487
Roark66 wrote: post #472

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. You're probably ri…

>MS has competing software (Skype for business previously known as Lync) Teams, not Skype for Business, is Microsoft's Slack competitor.

Teams' editor is also terrible

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#654

Post by xbryanx »

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’m surprised at this. The latest cloud editing experience in Confluence (Cloud) is pretty great in my opinion.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#655

Post by bandrami »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #615
TeMPOraL wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Personally, I recommend switching to Ripcord as a Slack client. That's what I did some time ago, and I couldn't be happier.

Thank you! I didn't know about Ripcord, and so far it is great. I am amazed how fast it is. I'm also depressed that this amazes me, as it basically does what mIRC did for me over a decade ago. This is developed in QT by one person, and it looks pretty feature-complete to me. I really don't understand why a company the size of Slack invests all their development effort into such a subpar platform as Electron, when a n…

> as it basically does what mIRC did for me over a decade ago

When Atlassian finally pulled Hipchat last year I was tasked with finding the replacement. Turns out the one that met everybody's needs best was a local IRCd and whatever desktop client for it people liked.

Some problems have been solved correctly for a while; chat is one of them.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#656

Post by acdha »

Nextgrid wrote: post #637
bishalb wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand why this change can be annoying to the tech savvy folks of hackernews, it can be quite helpful for those who aren't that tech savvy and want easy ways to bold, italicize texts (that make up majority of the slack user base). Heck I am sure most of the slack users wouldn't even know it was possible to bold, italicize on slack using markdown.

Why does everything need to cater to idiots instead of making them learn? If we continue down this trend we’ll end up with keyboards with a single button to cater to some monkeys out there who can’t manage to use a proper keyboard, at the expense of everyone else’s productivity. Is this the future we really want?

Because they’re not idiots but rather people with different priorities and backgrounds who were underserved previously. You might disagree that this is helpful but it’s unlikely that you know more about Slack’s users than their UX team. Treating everyone involved with respect is a much better strategy than what you’re doing.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#657

Post by vianneychevalie »

Nextgrid wrote: post #637
bishalb wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand why this change can be annoying to the tech savvy folks of hackernews, it can be quite helpful for those who aren't that tech savvy and want easy ways to bold, italicize texts (that make up majority of the slack user base). Heck I am sure most of the slack users wouldn't even know it was possible to bold, italicize on slack using markdown.

Why does everything need to cater to idiots instead of making them learn? If we continue down this trend we’ll end up with keyboards with a single button to cater to some monkeys out there who can’t manage to use a proper keyboard, at the expense of everyone else’s productivity. Is this the future we really want?

Is it not what we already have, with touch screens? One big button that can cater to every monkey on the planet?

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#658

Post by bandrami »

greggman2 wrote: post #474
Plyphon_ wrote: post #464

In their defence (not the defence of the WYSIWYG box itself) - they quite likely have done lots of user testing that has shown clear desirability, improved value to user, improved usability, etc etc. You have to remember Slack's target persona is probably no longer the Engineer (If it ever was) - it's more likely a much less tech-savvy employee who finds WYSIWYG editors very handy to create rich text inputs. I guess…

> they quite likely have done lots of user testing that has shown clear desirability, improved value to user, improved usability I have never worked at a company that did user testing or if they did it was always done in a way or interpreted in a way to back up the designer's opinion. I don't think I've once in my entire 40 yr career seen a designer test with users, find out something was bad, and change their design…

> I don't think I've once in my entire 40 yr career seen a designer test with users, find out something was bad, and change their design based on the test

Too, too true. I have seen designers proceed to "educate" their test users (sometimes for weeks at a time) as to why the users' preferences are wrong and the designer's are right.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#659

Post by the_af »

bishalb wrote: post #608
sambe wrote: post #495

This is not one of those "oh, that's annoying, i'll have to remember that and learn to work around it" issues. It's more like "I want to immediately stop using this software but have no choice". Its driving me crazy - Slack is all text input. Don't break text input dummy!

While I understand why this change can be annoying to the tech savvy folks of hackernews, it can be quite helpful for those who aren't that tech savvy and want easy ways to bold, italicize texts (that make up majority of the slack user base). Heck I am sure most of the slack users wouldn't even know it was possible to bold, italicize on slack using markdown.

Wasn't the target audience of Slack, at least initially, tech-savvy IT teams? If they take away plain text and markdown -- or make them harder to use -- they are alienating their early adopters.

Not sure what their user base looks like now, though.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#660

Post by sundvor »

sambe wrote: post #495

This is not one of those "oh, that's annoying, i'll have to remember that and learn to work around it" issues. It's more like "I want to immediately stop using this software but have no choice". Its driving me crazy - Slack is all text input. Don't break text input dummy!

On the topic of the old, am I the only one who found the switched behaviour of enter/shift-enter inside/outside a ``` block somewhat annoying?
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