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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

#421

Post by TeMPOraL »

bmarkovic wrote: post #414
Arathorn wrote: post #35

Amusingly, for https://riot.im we just shelved our WYSIWYG editor efforts after trying two completely separate implementations over the years (one via Draft.js, the other via Slate.js) because: a) it's a nightmare to get right, b) nobody used it anyway (it was optional), c) chat isn't a wordprocessor, d) markdown (commonmark) + floating formatting toolbar is good enough. Our current editor was written from scratch (c…

The fact that this industry turned to a proprietary low-quality solution like Slack when Riot/Matrix have already existed tells the full story about what a bunch of incompetent idiots we all are. Everyone frustrated with the new Slack input box deserves what they got. Me included.

Let's put some more blame on people who chose Slack for their companies/teams/communities. Most Slack users don't use it willingly.

I for one am showing the middle finger here; when forced to talk on Slack, I use Ripcord as a client.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#422

Post by blemasle »

That's why since yesterday on my French AZERTY typing a ` results in "`. Thanks a lot slack! Another reason that proves and allows me to keep saying that Slack is just a bad copy of IRC that's able to display useless gifs and consumes 1 to 2GB of ram for nothing :]

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#423

Post by arp242 »

bmarkovic wrote: post #414
Arathorn wrote: post #35

Amusingly, for https://riot.im we just shelved our WYSIWYG editor efforts after trying two completely separate implementations over the years (one via Draft.js, the other via Slate.js) because: a) it's a nightmare to get right, b) nobody used it anyway (it was optional), c) chat isn't a wordprocessor, d) markdown (commonmark) + floating formatting toolbar is good enough. Our current editor was written from scratch (c…

The fact that this industry turned to a proprietary low-quality solution like Slack when Riot/Matrix have already existed tells the full story about what a bunch of incompetent idiots we all are. Everyone frustrated with the new Slack input box deserves what they got. Me included.

The reason for Slack's success is probably because it's a "turn key solution": you register your company, invite your employees, enter your CC, and you're good to go.

With a lot of these open solutions things are more complex. I think we should really focus on providing a good UX here if we want more adoption.

(also, I don't know if Riot is that much better; opening https://riot.im/app/ makes Firefox use 100% CPU and my laptops fan spin; I closed it after 10 seconds of just a loading animation)

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#425

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #413
Nullabillity wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even sadder because Org-Mode demonstrated how to do WYSIWYG right. Apply the styling in real time, but then also show the formatting characters around it! That way you lose all of the weird WYSIWYG edge cases (will this character I type at the edge of a bold segment also be bold?), and you also teach WYSIWYG users Markdown in a natural way.

Ugh. No. This really breaks up the flow of the text. I’m sure it’s fine for org-mode’s intended audience, but for people not from a coding background, it’s horrid. And there’s no need to “teach WYSIWYG users Markdown” when WYSIWYG is fine for them.

It could remove the Markdown once the message has been sent, and only show it in editing mode. Then readers wouldn't have their flow disturbed, and authors could edit their messages in a sane way.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#426

Post by nizmow »

ako wrote: post #405
StefanKarpinski wrote: post #288

Slack’s old formatting syntax was Markdown-like but not exactly Markdown, just similar. In case anyone from Slack is paying attention to their technical users here, this is a great opportunity to move to CommonMark formatting for technical users and wysiwyg for non-technical users: just make this optional and switch the format syntax for the non-wysiwyg mode to CommonMark. I can understand that changing the formattin…

Slack probably has statistics which indicate that by now their largest user group is non-techies. And i'm assuming that if you look at paying customers, the amount of non-technies is probably even larger. People who are probably not even aware of this thing called markdown. So if you need to increase revenue replacing markdown with wysiwyg will make sense to UX and product management.

Sadly I think this is just another case of product adoption largely being driven by techies in the early stages because they loved it, and later in its growth stages realising their market is now way more mainstream and designing their features as such. And now we're alienated by the same product we helped spread.

Twitter is another obvious example I can think of.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#427

Post by TeMPOraL »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #413
Nullabillity wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even sadder because Org-Mode demonstrated how to do WYSIWYG right. Apply the styling in real time, but then also show the formatting characters around it! That way you lose all of the weird WYSIWYG edge cases (will this character I type at the edge of a bold segment also be bold?), and you also teach WYSIWYG users Markdown in a natural way.

Ugh. No. This really breaks up the flow of the text. I’m sure it’s fine for org-mode’s intended audience, but for people not from a coding background, it’s horrid. And there’s no need to “teach WYSIWYG users Markdown” when WYSIWYG is fine for them.

No, it doesn't. It's just syntax highlighting for markup. Disappearing formatting characters, which is what I switched Org to myself, is another story - it has some of the problems introduced by WYSIWYG.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#428

Post by Arathorn »

bmarkovic wrote: post #414
Arathorn wrote: post #35

Amusingly, for https://riot.im we just shelved our WYSIWYG editor efforts after trying two completely separate implementations over the years (one via Draft.js, the other via Slate.js) because: a) it's a nightmare to get right, b) nobody used it anyway (it was optional), c) chat isn't a wordprocessor, d) markdown (commonmark) + floating formatting toolbar is good enough. Our current editor was written from scratch (c…

The fact that this industry turned to a proprietary low-quality solution like Slack when Riot/Matrix have already existed tells the full story about what a bunch of incompetent idiots we all are. Everyone frustrated with the new Slack input box deserves what they got. Me included.

to be fair, Slack predates Riot (and Riot has only got properly usable as a Slack replacement since hitting 1.0 in Feb this year).

But yes, very frustrating to see folks forced by a proprietary product to suck up something like the Slack editor change when there are FOSS options where you can just roll it back, set a config flag to get what you want, or worst case fork it.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#430

Post by SwellJoe »

BigJono wrote: post #256
SwellJoe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All code sucks now, not just blocks. Inline code screws up at least half the time I use it; it tries to guess what I want, and sometimes doesn't end when I close it with another backtick. And, when going back and editing it sometimes carries the formatting outside of where I put the backticks. So frustrating. I hate having to think every time I insert code and re-do it about half the time; I'd rather have no formatti…

The worst thing about it is how fucking easy it would be to fix. Just treat the backticks as characters when backspacing or navigating with the arrows, that way you can 'enter' or 'exit' a code block reliably, and all previous muscle memory from the markdown editor would carry over. But no, apparently that's too hard for a company that's worth more dollars than the number of seconds any of us have been alive.

I think there's a battle between nerds and non-nerds, and maybe in between is the worst place to land. I know some of my projects' users complain a lot about the lack of a WYSIWYG editor in our forums and issue tracker (we use Markdown, displayed plain until previewed or saved). Some people hate it. But I would hate a standard WYSIWYG editor, so we just accept the hate. Every Markdown-ish WYSIWYG editor I've tried has sucked...so I don't know that it actually is easy to get right (if it is even possible, where is the good example?).

Slack serves a mix of nerds and non-nerds, with non-nerds becoming a bigger and bigger portion of their user base over time. I can only assume it will become less and less enjoyable for nerds in service to the goal of serving their growing non-nerd users. For my own projects, I don't foresee myself ever using Slack (I use it for work). It feels like a decent product getting worse with time as it tries to be all things to all people.

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