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The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

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Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#171

I don't get the commotion about this. The old slack editor was really poor, and the new one is just as poor, but differently. But at least with the WYSIWYG you can see before you send what parts of the markup it got wrong.

yes, but with the new one there are situations where you can't correct a mistake once you see it.

just start with a backtick escaped piece and then try to add extra text at the beginning of the line...

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#173

In case anyone's interested, here's the Chromium bug(s) that's one of the main reasons the WYSIWYG editor has such issues in Chrome(/Electron): - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=102937... - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=608393 - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=608162 The gist of it is that they "canonicalize" the DOM selection when you have two adjac…

I really hope they don’t think they can fix a few “bugs” and make this thing usable. I’ve noticed this in the past, when a previous employer got rid of their Markdown interface for interview candidate feedback. In response to everyone’s angry comments about their flaky piece of garbage WYSIWYG replacement, they responded “please file bugs if our Markdown-like shortcuts aren’t working right!” They were completely miss…

> I wonder if they’re deliberately insulting my intelligence.

They are, but in cases like these you should always ask yourself if you're the target market. Frankly, if you're not the one deciding whether to adopt Slack at your workplace, you're probably not...

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope they don’t think they can fix a few “bugs” and make this thing usable. I’ve noticed this in the past, when a previous employer got rid of their Markdown interface for interview candidate feedback. In response to everyone’s angry comments about their flaky piece of garbage WYSIWYG replacement, they responded “please file bugs if our Markdown-like shortcuts aren’t working right!” They were completely miss…

> I wonder if they’re deliberately insulting my intelligence. They are, but in cases like these you should always ask yourself if you're the target market. Frankly, if you're not the one deciding whether to adopt Slack at your workplace, you're probably not...

I work at a very small company with eminently reasonable management. If the engineers didn't want to use Slack, we wouldn't use it.

Sadly, you're probably right that most people aren't in that boat...

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#175

Dark mode, better performances, option to disable divisive new features: Slack might be making it harder to focus at work but the product itself improved quite a lot in 2019, kudos to the PMs.

> better performances I don't mean to bash slack too hard, but it honestly feels like the performance has gotten worse over time for me. Certain actions like Up Arrow (edit previous message) and loading threads on the "Threads" page seem to take way longer than they used to.

I concur, about 2-3 weeks ago an update occurred, i think the one prior to adding the WYSIWYG editor. Now if i minimize Slack in Windows then maximize it again, I get 5 seconds of black screen before it displays.

This happens at work, home, and my laptop.

Performance has never got better for me, just worse, but I keep hearing about performance improvements?!?

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#176
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to make the product appeal to all users and not just techy ones. And If I product managers or CEO or whoever can print his message bold he's happy. Very few non techy people know what markdown even is. (From my own experience asking friends etc.)

Step 1: google “how to make text bold in Slack” There is no step 2, that’s literally all you need to do.

I think you overestimate the tech skills of your average user. I know so many people for whom typing "how do I X" in Google is too difficult, and will flat out refuse to do it.

That's not to say that I think we should be dumbing down software for them. In fact, we should be doing the exact opposite.

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: google “how to make text bold in Slack” There is no step 2, that’s literally all you need to do.

I think you overestimate the tech skills of your average user. I know so many people for whom typing "how do I X" in Google is too difficult, and will flat out refuse to do it. That's not to say that I think we should be dumbing down software for them. In fact, we should be doing the exact opposite.

You're not wrong. I suppose all I can say is that software companies have every right in a free society to cater to people like that to the detriment of technical users... and I have every right to vote with my feet and wallet.

(There's a reason OpenBSD and macOS are both alive and well.)

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if they’re deliberately insulting my intelligence. They are, but in cases like these you should always ask yourself if you're the target market. Frankly, if you're not the one deciding whether to adopt Slack at your workplace, you're probably not...

I work at a very small company with eminently reasonable management. If the engineers didn't want to use Slack, we wouldn't use it. Sadly, you're probably right that most people aren't in that boat...

Exactly. At my current place, management would laugh in my face for even thinking of such a thing. And this is a small company, mind you.

Yes, I do want to leave asap.

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#179

It's pretty incredible to think that for all the billions of dollars around Slack it's still fundamentally the same product with the same value add that it was when it first launched. Sure, maybe it's faster or more efficient or whatever now, but what it is at heart is the _exact_ same thing it was on Day 1.

And still just a web browser underneath!

If they used a native toolkit this bug wouldn't exist, no?

Re: The latest version of Slack has a setting to disable the WYSIWYG editor

#180
What is the proposed utility of moving from being Markdown-friendly to getting all of these WYSIWYG solutions or " Simpler than Markdown " editing options on boards and chat solutions.

I really struggle to comprehend it, would it not be better to just have some sort of "standard" we all can go after?

Genuinely interested in knowing what companies are thinking, is it feedback-driven?

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