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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

#441

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

ako wrote: post #432
nizmow wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and most of us would do the same thing running a product, if it means more profits. Optimizing for Shareholder value...

Why not try to satisfy both kinds of users? Options and customizability are a thing. One-size-fits-all seems to be the current software trend, but it wasn't always like that. Maintaining a piece of UI that was already there shouldn't be that expensive.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#443

Post by IshKebab »

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.

Exactly - Slack has matched the formatting in WhatsApp, which pretty much everyone outside America uses. Far fewer people have even heard of Markdown.

It's still really annoying though.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#444

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

buboard wrote: post #438
arp242 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

It isn't the install. It is the updates - and the potential for future backwards incompatible updates.

FLOSS software needs hosted, supported, reasonably priced versions with security updates to be competitive.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#445

Post by Carpetsmoker »

buboard wrote: post #438
arp242 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

I don't think it's sad; I've worked for a lot of small companies. Spending a few days learning and setting up tools is a lot of investment, never mind maintenance. I want to focus on creating business value, not "plumbing" like setting up chat tools.

Small companies sometimes turn in to large ones, but migrating from the tools everyone is used to is often not received well. There is a lot of inertia here.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#446

Post by mathw »

I went to a Slack workspace I'm in which has had WYSIWYG editing turned on and the first assertion in the article - about the non-closing backticks - isn't true. Since they turned it on last week I've had no issues with anything at all like this - I just type exactly what I would have typed before and it formats correctly every time.

Dealing with quotes is better, even.

Now I didn't need any of this, but it doesn't get in my way at all. In that regard they've done a far better job than Visual Studio, which I just can't seem to persuade not to insert random nonsense from time to time when it thinks it's being "helpful".

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#447

Post by raverbashing »

buboard wrote: post #438
arp242 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 client and join #matrix:matrix.org. You can also check the Matrix Clients Matrix to see more detail.

Or then there's this which looks more like it: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/introduction/

Compare this with going to Slack's web page and clicking "Try Slack".

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

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#448

Post by benhurmarcel »

alexis_fr wrote: post #399
kelseydh wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the very first time I used Confluence I was in shock of how developer's at one time could have thought this was a good or useful product for discussing/planning code changes. For ticketing software, I find Clubhouse to be much better than JIRA. Normal markdown that doesn't drive you insane. Much slicker all around.

Concerning Clubhouse.io, it looks great, is there a download version? I know “Cloud is the way to go”, but I work in Men’s Rights (DV abuses, etc) and it is usually something that cloud companies don’t want on their platform, so we’re constantly at risk of being revoked.

No modern software works locally, it's always all in the cloud. That's why most large companies (and some cases like yours) stick with the big guys like Atlassian and Microsoft; the new competition doesn't support their data requirements.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#449

Post by buboard »

gdfasfklshg4 wrote: post #444
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 isn't the install. It is the updates - and the potential for future backwards incompatible updates. FLOSS software needs hosted, supported, reasonably priced versions with security updates to be competitive.

sorry, i think if a tech company can't maintain an install for something that is crucial , then it shouldnt be a tech company.perhaps it s a marketing shop or sth.

it's as if tech is delegating so much away that in the end there will be nobody left willing to actually do the tech

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#450

Post by benhurmarcel »

kelseydh wrote: post #355
igetspam wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I heavily advocate for not using Atlassian products. I use the "can't trust Australia" statement as a supporting argument but the terrible editor is what started my crusade. My company uses Jira but I do all my tracking in Clubhouse. We have Confluence but most of us write docs in Google Docs because it's less painful. I recently got us moving away from Bitbucket too. If Slack stands by this change (like…

100% agree that Clubhouse > JIRA. If I hear a company uses JIRA, I will actually question whether I want to work there.

Can you recommend a replacement for Jira that can be self-hosted? Many companies cannot store their data on a third-party server.
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