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

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#731

Post by cc81 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

rvanmil wrote: post #599

ailideex wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Teams is pretty horrible

That's never stopped enterprise IT from rolling out tools to their users. Teams is free as part of an Office 365 subscription (just like Sharepoint and all the other crap they bundle with it), which is what definitely makes it an existential threat to Slack, because now Slack is competing with Microsoft's very strong Office monopoly.

Teams has some UI issues (please make the chat more compact) but they have a pretty powerful tool for normal users who are already in the Office landscape.

The fact that you can create a group with some channels, add your files there and edit them together, have a wiki, have a (not very good) kanban board etc. makes it a pretty complete experience. Some of the tools they release needs more polish and some tools are by themselves much worse than stand alone competitors but having everything in one is pretty nice.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#732

Post by carc1n0gen » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

I don't know. It's really not that bad. No one is forcing you to click on these new buttons. The old markdown(ish) syntax still works, and even formats live as you type it, which for me is awesome.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#733

Post by timw4mail » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #638

epanchin wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please ask them what they think of the ‘drafts’ section. I’m so fed up of losing chats to that section.

I'm surprised that hasn't been reverted yet. It's so fucking stupid. Where did that chat go? oh it's up in drafts? WTF? Terrible UI choice. It makes no sense.

It would be okay if the channel were duplicated in the drafts section. But moved? That definitely makes no sense.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#734

Post by jasonzemos » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #656

Nextgrid wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does that justify conforming the user to the software? Software, especially web software, has this magical quality of doing different things for different people even at the same time.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#735

Post by germs12 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

100% agree. I wrote to them and their reply was this: "We don't have any plans to support turning the new WYSIWYG editor off."

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#736

Post by wtetzner » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

CloudNetworking wrote: post #710

SubuSS wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't fetishize control as much. In >15 years what I have seen is that OSS comes with a huge cost of attention - that you'd be better off focusing on your business need. Running most of these OSS even at a medium employee count scale is a full-team-commit-nightmare. It essentially means your it department now needs a specialist who will be able to handle your org quirks, remember the tweaks and keep baby sitti…

We don't need OSS in this case, we need open protocols so anyone can use any other client, proprietary or not.

Yeah, it's worked out well for email.

You can use paid services, or not. It's up to you, but they all interoperate.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#737

Post by nvr219 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

I'm ready to go back to irc

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#738

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

marktangotango wrote: post #632

Sholmesy wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is the primary method of communicating within your team/company, then you will find it difficult to not use it, or rather you will be left out of major decisions/changes.

You’ve described the pathology and first reason to NOT use chat for anything important. What am I supposed to do? Sit on the chat all day so I don’t miss anything? I’m on a team that does this now. I ignore the 100 to 1000 plus messages and memes a day and I have missed “important decisions”. It’s a net negative imo.

If your team is sending memes all day, that's a cultural problem. Slack is exposing the problem, not creating it.

My employer uses Slack. Our team channels are almost completely devoid of cruft. There are office/location based channels that contain more bloat, but those are easy to ignore and typically don't contain critical information. All of the "all employee" type channels are locked down.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#739

Post by bobobooey » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

So one extra space after the back-tick is now considered a lot of muscle memory?

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#740

Post by iicc » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

niutech wrote: post #522

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!

This is another argument against using proprietary SaaS solutions for such crucial purposes as business communication. There are free open source alternatives which give you full control and privacy: Mattermost, Riot.im, Rocket.chat, Let's Chat.

also https://zulipchat.com